


you taught me how to love, (It's me who taught you how to stop)

by GibbousLunation



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a Mess (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Depression, Guilty Aziraphale, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Miscommunication, Post-Canon, Self-Esteem Issues, Sickfic, They both need to drink that self love juice and talk but instead I wrote this, aziraphale!whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 14:57:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19929952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GibbousLunation/pseuds/GibbousLunation
Summary: Aziraphale struggles to accept he can have what he wants now that Heaven's not around to watch. Crowley struggles to accept being wanted.Or, the one where guilt is a dangerous thing for an angel.





	1. I broke your heart so carelessly,

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to my pal taizi for completely enabling the angst portion of my brain and exacerbating a tiny plot thread I had about Aziraphale realizing how much his saying no all the time really affected Crowley, and making it ten times more painful. Enjoy!

He supposed it began the same way as anything, or rather, the same way everything had turned out in the end. Something equally as confused and vague, turned inside and outward and pushed alongside a lovely tin of biscuits.

A swan song that began with the beginning of everything, picked up startling momentum shortly after a particular ‘demonic miracle’, and settled into a constant, like a hum throughout one’s thoughts. Like a heartbeat.

Somewhere after the Apoca-oh-no-you-don’t, the steady downward pace became a freefall. The consequences of which were seemingly unforeseeable from the perspective of the one hurtling through endless blue, but were in all likelihood, exactly what he deserved.

It was in the little things, really.

The obvious:

Aziraphale saw the sunlight creep over the cityscape sleepily, almost as if it had been preparing for an unending hibernation and rather rudely been set to work instead. The orange beams splashed across lazy dust specks, spiraling around with only the sort of relaxation a Saturday could hold.

His hand wrapped against a warm mug, tea or cocoa, he couldn’t recall. He’d plucked up a second and placed it against a coaster, maybe a little too pointedly, without thinking much of the steady comfort or the familiarity that had seemingly spawned between the gaps of one page and the next.

And there’d been the boot clad feet, propped against the coffee table, long limbs splayed uncaringly against his sofa. “Thanks, angel.” Crowley nodded, and sniffed loudly as he tilted his head back up towards the ceiling.

“The thing is, really. Between all this mess anyways and you know how your lot hates mess. The point. _Moss_ , that’s the thing.”

“Moss?” Aziraphale added, on queue as always. A tender sort of lightning sparking against his cheeks as he forced down a smile that was far too soft and small for his comfort.

“Grows only on the side the sun is, right? Or, maybe flip that. Bit of a strange thing, innit? Deciding plants could _decide_ things like that, they have an appalling amount of sense tucked in those stems don’t let them fool you, but. Thing is, they let the plants decide, going ‘ _Growing on that side of this stump? Ugh, awful stuff that side is. Freezing at night and then what will all the other fungi think?_ ’ and moving in alongside all the beetles and the woodpeckers with a _thank you please_ , and then. And then! End of it all? No say at all about any of this.” Crowley gestured broadly, Aziraphale supposed he likely didn’t mean the copy of Charlotte’s Web on the shelf across from him.

“I don’t believe moss and fungi are the same species,” Aziraphale added, taking a sip.

Crowley sat up a little more. “They’re not?” He blinked, wide without the shades interrupting. “What the hell is a fungus anyway. Okay, well. There’s my point then! All these groups and species, someone Up There’s got to have made them and thought they were all high and mighty for doing it. Probably got ‘em a nice pat on the wings and all. And then! Poof, there’s the Apocalypse. What did the moss do, deserving all that mess?”

He nodded thoughtfully. Years ago he’d have said ‘well they must have done something to deserve it!’. Years ago he’d have gone off on a lecture with a prim nod, about the glories of Heaven and how they’d surely think of the moss and the fungi and not one would be even lightly smote.

Now, he only sipped his tea and nodded seriously and threw bits in to stoke the conversation, content to just listen. To _be_ , so long as Crowley was there too.

“How’s your tea, dear?”

Crowley grunted a ‘fine’, before continuing on. “And then there’s all the worms and bits too. They count. Great and small you said, right? Bit rubbish, I say. Cheeky line in there and suddenly, oh! We’ve forgotten the worms and the.” He flailed a hand.

“Mosquitos?” Aziraphale offered. Crowley shot him a quick wolfish smile.

“Mosquitos! Exactly! Didn’t think of that one. Probably all crooked halo’d and knackered right out and thought they’d sneak a ‘small’ in there and no one would be the wiser, just to get an earlier night in. Covers a lot of crawling things, a line like that. And now look, got to think of the mosquitos!”

Aziraphale smiled into his cup, and pretended the tea was to blame for the burst of warmth traveling through his chest. “I can’t say I often spend them any thought,” he noted.

“Right!” Crowley almost spilled his tea, likely prevented with a quick miracle at the last moment. “No one ever does. Shame. Probably have all sorts of interesting tidbits to share. Oh, angel, how’s that whole search thing going, on the by and by?”

Aziraphale lowered his cup, “excellently, if finding nothing were the objective.” Perhaps Crowley was rubbing off on him more than he’d thought, if the surprised spark in Crowley’s expression was any indicator.

“Oh, well. Nothing to worry about, probably. If you can’t find it, I don’t think Gabriel’s about to stumble across it.”

He was referring, of course, to an interesting rumor they’d caught hold of months earlier. Something about a way to weaken an angel, ominous enough sounding on its own. After all, what was a weakened angel, a less high and mighty one? Blasphemous thoughts should likely arise more concern in Aziraphale’s mind than the faint twinge he experienced, but such was the experience of being an ex-employee but Unfallen Angel, he supposed.

“I do hope you’re right,” Aziraphale nodded with a smile he tried to make as calming as possible.

Crowley lifted his cup as if to toast. “When am I ever wrong?”

 _If I could bottle this moment,_ Aziraphale had thought wildly. _Keep it forever, keep you forever._ The thought made a shiver run through him, a tendril of fear that wormed its way into sealing his lips and holding his tongue.

Forever to an immortal was an awful large amount of bottled moments, no doubt. He supposed he’d have time to sort things out by then. 

The subtle:

There’d been the shop bell, ringing in the obnoxiously off tune way he’d specifically ordered, and Muriel pulling her sun hat off with a shrewd glance around the shelves.

“Ah,” he’d said. “Afraid I haven’t received the new shipment yet, the gentleman with the transport service said there’d been a spot of rain. Delayed the whole trip by a large margin, I’d wager.”

The touch of rain was more of a hurricane, the hurricane more of a conjured letter that was very convincing about a free vacation for pilots, today only, supplied and funded by a prince in a far away country. The lad would have a lovely time, and the books would conveniently appear in Aziraphale’s back room and noted as ‘lost’ for the company itself. Aziraphale would be appropriately disappointed, and Muriel, who had been visiting persistently every morning for the past three years- provided he actually opened the shop in the morning hours- would likely finally lose interest. _Finally._

Muriel smiled at him, eyes sparkling. “That’s a shame, but it can’t be helped.”

Aziraphale nodded back, lips twitching into a smile. “Suppose it can’t.” He deeply adored Muriel. He offered her tea, she slid a tin of her fresh baked pastries, and neither of them would leave the shop with anything more than they’d walked in with.

After they’d exhausted the tin and the kettle, Muriel would smile and say ‘better luck next time!’ and inevitably show up the following morning hours like she’d been on lookout for the open sign for weeks. Aziraphale knew, in the bits and flashes she radiated and in the occasional pat of hands, that it kept her company. He _adored_ Muriel.

Today, she patted his hand. He felt a flash of bittersweet love, the kind that spoke of years that were wrapped up carefully and placed on the highest shelves because one could not bear to look at them. “Quite a lovely pair you two make,” she smiled with her eyes over at him.

“Hm?” She rolled her eyes, and tilted her head in Crowley’s direction. The demon for all his complaining about the stuffiness of the shop, the dreary lull of sitting and waiting for customers he’d only inevitably chase out, had not so much as moved in the past hour. He was a picture of relaxation, all stretched out and winding on the old couch, flicking through something or other on his phone.

Muriel squeezed his hand. “I remember what that’s like, the side glances and the heart all a-flutter feeling.” She huffed a laugh, Aziraphale had rarely felt more lost in his life. (A lie, he was regularly caught off guard by 78% of the things Crowley said but had acquired a taste for rolling with the punches. He was confused by Gabriel approximately 99% of the time, with the one percent lying heavily on the open threats and distaste for sushi.)

“Make sure you tell him every day, doesn’t have to be with words of course.” Aziraphale blinked.

Muriel moved backwards, sipping the last dredges of her lukewarm drink. “Charming boyfriends like that are a one in a million.”

Here was the problem with Aziraphale’s knowledge of the world and therein beyond, the past twelve odd years excluded. The problem with suddenly being bereft of rules or memos or check ins, without the looming threat of discorporation, or Worse. One develops habits, survival instincts perhaps. Aziraphale’s had always been less of a line in the sand as opposed to a canyon, the way Crowley straddled the divide made him queasy, nauseated, _envious._ Being evil inherently, he’d always reasoned, meant breaking the rules was in fact following the rules.

Aziraphale hadn’t so much as the option to consider skirting the rules, or at least he wasn’t meant to. He’d developed an unfortunate proclivity towards lying, however, particularly in relation to one demon specifically.

“Oh, he’s not my- it’s not like that. I wouldn’t-“ supernatural ethereal entities have unfortunately superior hearing among other senses, Crowley’s shuffle was a cacophony of discomfort. His shift was a painting in injury, the set of his stiff shoulders a barricade. Aziraphale panicked, wanted nothing more than to reign in his foolish, thoughtless words before they’d developed barbs and sunk into his only friend. “O-or, well, that is to say, it’s not that I. It’s a….partnership,” he finished, weakly.

Muriel blinked at him, stunned, and her expression twisted into something far too complicated and knowing. She patted his shoulder this time. He felt far less melancholia, and more of something pitying, like seeing a small dog out in the rain. Or, no. It felt more like watching a small dog refuse to walk inside through an open door, and choose to shiver out in the rain. A bit daft, as if one was exhaling with exasperation without meaning to. Dammit all, but he adored Muriel and her painfully keen eyes.

“Well,” she attempted a smile, it didn’t reach her eyes. “whatever you’ve got, it’s mighty special. Wouldn’t want to go meddling, though. Best be on my way.”

“Er… right, lovely as always, my dear girl.” He muttered, entirely distracted by the yawning frustration in his chest.

Crowley hadn’t moved through the conversation, or even as Aziraphale had awkwardly cleared up their cups. To all the world he looked just as relaxed as always, to an angel who’d had no choice but to notice, and notice, and keep unfailingly and infuriatingly notice, it was a red light at the dead of night. Everything about him was locked up taught and forcibly spread outwards, like he were screaming ‘Relaxed’ rather than feeling any part of it. If Aziraphale knew Crowley at all, which he knew he did, this would not be a cheerful night with wine and little words late into the evening.

If that had been the only occasion, he could play the whole thing as a slip up. As a defense mechanism, maybe. Crowley likely would have rolled his eyes and let the obvious hurt slide away, because he was unfailingly forgiving in a way demons shouldn’t be. Only towards him specifically, of course.

However, the week earlier he’d been quick to rip their hands apart the moment anyone peered their way; the week before that he’d made a point of feigning ignorance towards Crowley’s suggestion of staying over with a leap of panic causing him to close the door abruptly. However, for years upon years he’d been playing hot and cold with the mere concept of friendship, and yet he’d chosen to hold his hand at the end of the world. And yet he’d felt the indescribable flashes of overpowering love emanating from his own center echoed back tenfold in the Ritz only a month prior. And yet, _and yet._

He'd have time, he told himself, he had all the time in the world now.

Then, there was the unavoidable:

Aziraphale was a coward. Through and through.

Him, the principality, the protector of the Eastern Gate, the angel who’d help avert the Apocalypse, the warrior and the soldier and the ever-Good Employee. If he’d help add anything to the Earth in all his years, it had been the definition of dithering, the sudden flash of inspiration for cocoa to supply its own marshmallows, and ineffably, the concept of irony as a whole.

He’d always known how Crowley felt, how could he not when the demon was screaming it with every second breath? Some locked tight secret part of him, burned into his bones and his bones and his _bones_ and he’d never entirely been able to take one breath around it, had always known how he’d felt too.

The cowardly warrior, the unsure protector, the _Foolish Principalitee._ Flashes of bright skittering gold against his heart and his fingertips because, oh, Crowley’s smile was the eighth wonder of the mortal world and the infinite wonder of the immortal but the most sacred one. Because oh, the way he said angel like it was a blessing, a reverence, a word he shouldn’t be gifted but couldn’t help cherishing anyways. Because of everything, because of all of them, and yet, Aziraphale hesitated. He was always, always, hesitating.

Aziraphale wasn’t there when Crowley fell, or any of the others, actually. He’d been stationed at a desk, filing paperwork which had only recently been invented and told that they’d call him if he was needed.

Unsurprisingly, and constantly, he never was.

The general consensus Upstairs between whispered water cooler discussions and vaguely passive aggressive memos seemed to involve interacting with Aziraphale as little as possible. He’d always been a bit too… something, for all of them. Precocious maybe, too desperate to stick to the rule books, as it were.

_Later, between sips of warm tea and a quiet evening that wrapped up his four walls in stretching shadows and brighter orange hues, the realization would hit him. An all over sort of thought as quick as a gasp and powerful enough to rearrange the floorboards without one noticing. Like an eviction notice, or an awful phone call. That he’d spent an eternity trying to win approval, some subconscious part of him vying for any amount of genuine gratitude, any sign of that he was On The Right Track. And spent the better part of it walking directly away from everything he’d been craving with his eyes shut._

He hadn’t been there when Crowley fell. He heard stories about the great flashes of light and the trailing echoes of calls for forgiveness that sunk them only faster, about the way some had clung to their last shreds of Love and begged. About how Michael had looked directly in her Brother’s eyes and shoved him overboard. Everything about it had seemed far too messy, at the time. Too nauseating, all the pain and horrible punishments. ‘ _They deserve it’_ , Gabriel would say, calm as always. _‘To reject Her Love? They deserve worse.’_

Aziraphale had thought to himself that there likely was nothing worse, anyway. The funny thing about mortal depictions of angels was that they had more bits right than not, but all tangled up and backwards. Without corporations of course, there was a lot more prismatic light rays and fuzzy concepts of too many eyes with swirling centers, but the halos were stunningly close.

Back before the Fall, there’d been More. A sense of whole-ness, of intrinsic ties and humming melodies thrumming just beneath the surface of every conversation. It started twanging out of tune, of course, when the idea of humanity was brought up, but the threads were still interwoven. It had been a bit like breathing, like remembering a moment as it happened and tucking it away for later, like a supernova collapsing and reforming and catching the waves between the spaces of your ribcage. Constant, obvious.

When the angels started tumbling into Other Things, it was like snapping the cord. Aziraphale had been told that they’d chose this, that the idea of staying linked with them all was somehow worse than the impossible empty void they were all diving into. That they took Her gift and destroyed it in ways that were incomprehensible, that they Hated and Hated until there was no more gifts left to Hate.

Crowley, of course, had never much seemed to hate anything.

Aziraphale had wondered, half dazedly over the years, how he could have dyed the sun in shades of brimstone and mottled it all up on purpose without all that burning anger. How he could have slipped into Hell by surprise, like he’d pressed the wrong button on an elevator, and walked out so untouched by everything Down There. He wondered if Crowley had ever had a choice.

Wondering was a dangerous thing of course, sort of a trip slide or a drunken conversation away from questions and a face fist stumble into doubts. Being around Crowley so long had worn at him in little ways, despite his best efforts. One year in the 70’s he’d turned around and realized he couldn’t conjure up the same fear he’d once held about the whole concept, which of course then made him fully frightened and retreat into his oldest collection of books until he’d worked his way back up to the 1990’s once again.

Gabriel had told him what it meant to Fall, that it only took a little dash of sin to change the whole angel recipe and sour it irreparably. That She would Know and would be heartbroken, and if he wasn’t splintered entirely in that process, he would be later. He told him that there’d once been as many angels as the mind could conjure and then some, but there weren’t nearly as many demons. He’d looked Aziraphale directly in the eyes, grabbed his shoulder, and smirked.

“That’s why we don’t consort with demons, obviously. Because only the worst ones lived through Falling to begin with.”

Aziraphale hadn’t been there when the Love was ripped out of Crowley’s center, when the string snapped and the flames rushed inwards. He hadn’t heard the pleas or the begging, seen the smirks or the tears, but sometimes he could almost see an echo. Just a bit, in the way Crowley threw his legs up on Aziraphale’s coffee table, appearing for all the world like he was daring Aziraphale to get in a snit over it, but always chose the only spot not covered in books. It shone just a bit in the way Crowley never really resisted the occasional blessing here and there, in the way he knew which foods were Aziraphale’s favorites and remembered the restaurants, in the way the demons shoulders seemed to only un-tense when they were drinking wine in the bookshop together.

The Crowley he knew wouldn’t have torn his heart out for hate, wouldn’t have thought about it for a second. The Crowley he knew winced at righteous fury, drank for a week straight after so much as glancing at the Spanish Inquisition, revived dead animals just because. The Crowley he knew had love, had it in spades more than anyone else Above or Below. A supposedly impossible thing, and yet there it was. In the press of a touch to heal Aziraphale’s burnt fingers, in the way he cherished his Bentley, in the way he’d grabbed hold of the anti-christ’s hand without faltering for a moment. In the simple fact he’d stopped time, transported them elsewhere, just for a moment to think and regroup, _all because Aziraphale had threatened to never talk to him again._

Granted, there likely wouldn’t have been an occasion to, had the world ended in the few moments following.

If there was a wonder swirling away inside him, if there was a doubt mingling beneath the surface, a question pressing like electricity against his teeth, it was about the way Crowley’s voice had cracked over the phone last night, ‘ _You’re fine, right? We’re all fine, yeah of course. You’d ring me up if…? Right.’_ It was about the way he smiled with his eyes, when he let Aziraphale see them. When he _only_ let Aziraphale see them.

If there was a ‘why’ tucked inside his heart, it had always been about Crowley.

At first, he’d worried. Oysters and drinks in Greece were questionable, certainly, but there wasn’t really a precedent for encountering a demon so directly in one’s workplace and he’d been on paperwork duty for eons prior to the whole sword business. He’d worried himself into an easy familiarity, then an Arrangement, and before he’d thought to check his surroundings, there’d been so much to realize.

Here was the problem:

Aziraphale wanted to be good.

Angels didn’t need to want what they were already, what they were made of. Angels didn’t need to fret about choices, about secrecy and exaggerations, and making sure not to expend too many miracles on unnecessary things. They didn’t need to panic and stare blankly at cups of cocoa that went cold three times over because angels did not make mistakes. They were the definition of good.

Here was the real problem:

When the dust settled, and the flickering glitter of magic faded into a still night, Aziraphale was left alone with a growing ‘why’ that no longer fit inside the valves and the chambers of his physical heart, and had long since spilled through in blazing shades into the rest of him.

He’d sat around Gabriel and Michael for an eternity, and the light press of Crowley’s knuckles against his, the casual and purposeful dismissal of what it meant. The way Crowley trailed danger along behind him like a cape, one he chose to wear and flourish if it only meant Aziraphale never so much as had to lock a door. The way Crowley was brimming with ‘of course’ in a way that meant arched brows and disbelief, as if stepping over the boundaries between them was really as simple as that, as if it was worth choosing over and over and over again. As if he’d been making the same choice for eons, and it no longer held any tangible weight.

And the ‘why’:

Not so much of a why, in reality, but an ‘ah, there you are’. A hello, a welcome. A breath in and a breath out.

Crowley deserved someone brave. Someone willing to cross boundaries and defy augury and stare straight into the sun without backing down. Aziraphale had never been that, had shown his friend, his Crowley, time and time again that he would never be that. Yet, Crowley had stood there, never blinking away from the sun, unquestioningly stepping through the impossible just to make sure Aziraphale smiled.

Maybe Aziraphale had always buggered up every opportunity for bravery thus far, letting Crowley take far more than his fair share all for fear of unimpressed memo’s or disapproving visits from Gabriel. However, they had only recently skirted the short death of the world, _today was a new day_ as they say.

And so, a plan:

“Crowley, my dear, I was thinking,” he set aside his glass, spreading his palms downwards on his thighs staring down at it unseeingly. Strength would never come to him because it wasn’t his to build, but he could do this anyways. He could try, Crowley deserved someone who would try.

The evening was a familiar blanket around the two of them, shelves of books to separate them from the outside world, and soft lamplight haloing them both between their chairs. If Aziraphale had to name a happy place, it would be this. The pleasant coziness of wine lulling his constant fears, the cultivated product of years of love around them, Crowley’s unguarded golden eyes and a flicker of a smile that he knew went so much deeper. I _f there was ever a time,_ he knew.

“Angel?” Crowley sounded confused, a touch worried, that wouldn’t do. The unthinking way he leaned closer, just to catch whatever words Aziraphale said next. The complete and full attention he paid him, the readiness he had like he could jump to Aziraphale’s defense if need be. Like none of this was of consequence at all.

_It matters, my dear, it always matters._

“I… Well, I got to thinking the other night,” he bit his lip, confidence wavering. What if it wasn’t enough? How does one cover thousands of years in a moment, really? How does one say _‘I’ve finally done it; I’ve finally worked out that I can have this? Want more. It took so long but I’ve gotten there in the end.’_

“You said. Two times thinking, hm? Dangerous hobby that is,” Crowley leaned backwards, picture of nonchalance that was lined in anxiety Aziraphale could read with his eyes shut. Nerves once again shoved aside, all to make the spotlight placed on the angel shift, to give him the space to find his words and the time to place them. A rush of affection made him feel floaty, lighter than air.

“Is it. Is it possible, that I’ve not told you? I… It’s just that, I hoped I hadn’t led you astray somewhere, with all my…. Me, I suppose.”

He chanced a glance up at the demon, catching the stunned arch of his brows. At first, he’d thought he’d finally strung it out, as clearly as when Crowley had placed the stars themselves (funny joke, he’d told Aziraphale once. Placing all these pictures up there that no one would find. Except of course the humans had, only they’d twisted up the pictures. Crowley had been rather upset about the spoon ordeal). Then.

The downturn of a lip, the careful tucking away of anything vulnerable, the snuffing out of the warmth and happiness. Crowley’s face fell, crumpling for a moment like Aziraphale had decided maybe Crowley’s heart would look dashing with a flaming sword straight through it. Then he’d shut down and shuttered up entirely.

“Ah,” Crowley said, somehow the words were colder than anything else he could have replied with. “Astray, is it?” He took a large sip from his glass and refused to look back Aziraphale’s direction. “No, I don’t suppose you have.”

That, certainly was not the reaction he’d expected. “Hold on, dear boy. I… I’ve said it wrong, haven’t I?” 

Crowley hummed, an empty sound Aziraphale would gladly do without. “No, angel. You said it fine. Message received and all. Won’t be a bother.”

 _Ah,_ Aziraphale thought bleakly, _this was why he didn’t do plans._ Organized point A to B tended to be rubbish where Crowley was concerned, with all his curved edges where one expected hard lines and all. Practiced speeches and turns of phrase constantly flew out the window, or the ceiling. Crowley liked genuine thoughts, Aziraphale’s enthusiastic rambles, his half-hearted attempts at insults never held up because Crowley always, always saw through him. _Except apparently, for when he chose to be obtuse_ , Aziraphale thought exasperatedly.

So then, instinct:

Aziraphale felt the bunch in his shoulders before he’d let the thought travel all the way through him, some distant reasoning screaming at him to fix this, to not hesitate _for once, dear lord, Aziraphale what are you afraid of?_

He hadn’t allowed himself to think, not beyond the careful pinched lilt to Crowley’s mouth, the way he’d curled inwards but hadn’t moved. The way he let Aziraphale set the boundaries, the speed, always endlessly expecting nothing, let Aziraphale push and pull as it suit him and still never decided enough was enough. The way, even now behind his glasses, he was watching Aziraphale like he was glowing, the lines in his brows a painting in wounds and hurts that he kept on weathering anyways.

 _Enough_ , Aziraphale said to himself. _He deserves to know._

“Look, it’s. It’s fine, really. Already forgot the whole thing, I’ll just. Well, I’ll give you a lift to the shop and uh, yeah. Head out I suppose, if - _mmf_!”

Crowley’s lips were a marvel underneath his, lightly chapped but so soft. Warm and sweet in ways that nothing could ever compare to, like electricity and fire and icing all at once. They were dry and tasted of wine and something intangible like grief and longing and heartbreak and adoration. It was addicting, it was like coming home.

Crowley didn’t kiss back.

Aziraphale managed to pull the fleeting scraps of his sense back inwards enough to lean backwards, enough decency left to blush.

“Oh,” Crowley said, eyes wide.

“Apologies, my dear. I fear I’ve complicated too much with words over the years, I thought maybe. Rather, I hoped, it would be best if I showed you instead.”

Crowley stared.

Aziraphale reached for his hand, cradling it between his own.

“I would think it would be redundant, that surely you would know by know that I’ve. That this….” He sighed, closing his eyes.

“I had been thinking, last night alone in my shop, that it seemed too silent. Funny thing, all these years of cultivating the perfect haven away from the noise and yet I find myself continuously craving it.” He chuckled; it came out far too watery. He hazarded a glance up at Crowley who was still staring at him as though he’d gone on about how Hastur was a lovely chap and he should like to invite Gabriel to teatime. “I rather thought, well. If I could be selfish, I’d like it if you would stay with me. As long as you’d like.”

The hand twitched. “Angel.”

Aziraphale lifted his head, suddenly ravenous with the need to devour Crowley’s reaction, whether in hopes he’d agree or because he craved the rejection he truly deserved, he couldn’t say. Two sides of one wretched coin.

He hadn’t anticipated the wobble in Crowley’s lip, the way he bit at it like he could deny its existence. The frightened and impossibly tortured pain in his eyes, the hitch in his aura that radiated a need to run like a cornered animal.

“Oh, my dear!” Aziraphale flew closer, unthinking, cradling Crowley’s cheek like a wave crashing on a shore, like he could be nowhere else. “What is it? Crowley, have I ruined it? Please don’t look so distraught my dear, my heart shan’t be able to handle it.”

He pretended not to notice the way Crowley leaned into the touch, like he was a plant in the desert and Aziraphale’s touch was the first sight of rain. Starving, drowning. He pulled back sharply, a laugh on his jagged toothy smirk that was practically a sob. “Shan’t, he says. No one says shan’t anymore, shame. Useful word, shan’t.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley breathed out, and in with a sharper gasp. He fought with himself, mouth twisting before falling flat and thin. His yellow eyes met Aziraphale’s behind the tinted glass, and Aziraphale felt the gravity of it still his heart.

The angels chose to fall, they’d said. Chose to reject love. And yet that thrumming warmth, that connection, that completeness had never wavered. Aziraphale knew Crowley through and through, and he knew there had never been anything missing, no lack of love, no emptiness. Crowley hadn’t chosen to fall; he’d accidentally walked into it and been handed a label and told that he deserved all of it.

Aziraphale looked at Crowley, at the furrow of his brows, the electric fear mixed with caution, like he was afraid to hope. He looked at Crowley and he saw the stars, the constellations, the universes all unfolding and twinkling together.

Aziraphale moved closer yet and pulled Crowley closer, perfectly in time to feel the way the demon shuddered, a quiet wobbling “oh” tumbling from his lips.

The problem, then, was that with the two of them, there never seemed to be a clear way out. That for all the parts Aziraphale hadn’t been there for, all the Falling and the sauntering, it had led Crowley to him. But he hadn’t caught him, he’d stood and watched Crowley whirl past in a flash of light and thought to himself ‘what a beautiful creature’.

Aziraphale had altered their friendship, with the impulsive move of kissing Crowley, but he hadn’t patched up the holes he’d left behind. He’d led them into a strange half zone, one where tangled fingers were common as were kisses late into the night, but one where words were never fully voiced and thoughts never went expressed. A fragile and far too tentative space for the two of them.

Aziraphale and Crowley and become AziraphaleandCrowley but, really, when had they ever been anything else. And Aziraphale, foolishly, had thought Crowley would find his place next to him like he’d always meant to, that this would be their happily ever after all wrapped with a bowtie.

Aziraphale, also, had thought their misunderstanding over the centuries was a two way street, that Crowley had been saintly and waiting patiently, and knowing as clearly as the sunlight that Aziraphale would get there eventually. That all of this was just a matter of time.

The thing was, Crowley had never been what he appeared. He enjoyed being contrarian, playing with expectations and assumptions. A defense, probably, (obviously) for the fact he truly was not what he was meant to be. Not cruel enough for most demons, too uncomfortable with anything truly direct, anything bereft of free will, and not content enough with rules or righteousness to sit still in heaven.

Crowley was a say yes when he meant no, a make jokes louder and more biting the more unhappy he felt, a flip switch into emotions that careened wild and bright but a shutter with a safe lock on top of anything genuine or vulnerable, type of confusion that always left Aziraphale wrong footed and lost. He had been learning though, to his own credit. Enough to know that the easy comforting familiarity they were building was founded on something much shakier.

Enough to know the side glances and nervous frantic energy was more than just excitement, more than relief.

The thing was, Crowley had it twisted up and backwards in his own mind as well. He seemed to think voicing an issue would make it exist, that any wrongdoing worth being upset over was inherently not worth discussing at all. If there was a snag in the thread, as it were, he’d throw the garment under a pile of bricks sooner than acknowledge it.

The strange surprised glances when Aziraphale suggested he move his plants into the shop left an even stranger discomfort under the angels’ skin. The tentative suggestion played off as a loud and casual joke, that they should buy a better couch if he was to be spending so many evenings over made Aziraphale’s heart catch. As though there wasn’t always space beside him, as if that space hadn’t always intrinsically and inevitably been Crowley’s from the start.

Even after everything, after the morning lazy kisses, the dinner outings, the twined fingers, Crowley kept looking at him like he was about to disappear. As though he were an art exhibit, only able to view and not touch. He kept jolting in surprise, eyes constantly full of caution and closed off walls. He’d thought maybe, despite the achingly slow pace Crowley had been taking for years, perhaps Aziraphale was the one charging forwards too quickly. Perhaps they needed a retreat, a place for just the two of them unbound by walls with years and years of pining and dancing around each other. Aziraphale wanted many things, many beautiful wonderful things, but mostly, he wanted Crowley to be _happy._

All of it went a bit topsy turvy after Aziraphale suggested they go on a trip together, of all things.

“Wouldn’t it be lovely, dear? I haven’t visited the Americas since… well, must have been when I met that lovely Elvis fellow. Ah, yes! We went to see that new film too, what was it? The one with the terribly unwell looking child and all. I remember thinking it was all well and good to have a priest over, but it seemed the poor girl wasn’t much up to the company- oh! Yes, and you kept leaving to get more popcorn even though we had plenty.”

“Awful movie all around that was. Specially the head twisting bit. Made far too many people all uppity about demons for a while, d’you know how hard it is to suggest some sneaky little temptation when everyone’s up and raring to call the nearest priest at so much of a hiccup?” Crowley grumbled a little into his tea as Aziraphale finished off the last bits of his divinely scrumptious crepe.

He made sure with just a little extra thought that the chef of this establishment would find a tenner on his way home and wake up tomorrow feeling extraordinarily rested. A thought hit him, and he paused with surprise.

“My dear, were you, by chance…. Afraid?”

“Was not! Nothing of the sort. I invented the concept of getting up several times during a film you know, made the couple behind us absolutely livid. Ruined their whole sweet and sappy evening.”

Aziraphale smiled at him knowingly.

“Afraid,” Crowley scoffed. “You know what’s truly terrifying is how much like Hastur that girl was looking near the middle of things.”

Aziraphale nodded sympathetically, and patted Crowley’s arm. “You didn’t answer my original question, Crowley.”

Crowley sniffed, “What’s that?”

“I thought it would be nice if we took a vacation of sorts, just the two of us.” He beamed. “Seeing as we’re no longer tied down to certain places or temptations, we could go anywhere we like! A quiet evening with the stars on one of those beaches in the tropical areas sounds charming, doesn’t it? Oh, we could get some wine and a blanket, play one of your be-bop songs…” He clasped his hands together, and nodded a little to himself, “Really would be very romantic, the whole thing. Like a honeymoon.”

Aziraphale sighed a little dreamily, enraptured with the thought. It seemed so appealing, the dusks half light, the way all the galaxies and universes would spiral and paint the whole sky. With the dark covering them, in a place neither angel or demon would know to look, Aziraphale could be braver. They could just _be._

So caught up in the way his heart skipped pleasantly at the idea, he missed the flicker of Crowley’s expression. “Probably too balmy this time of year, isn’t it? All the bugs and things out there would annoy the both of us. Best skip the whole thing,” Crowley’s voice was tense, in a subtle way only Aziraphale could read. It pulled him out of his reverie with a frown.

“Is it? But it’s September, I’d read that Fall was a lovely time to-“

“Ah, there’s the bill,” Crowley cut him off with a snap of his fingers, fishing out a pen from the ether and writing his signature in a scrawl across the bottom. Aziraphale dazedly made sure to add a tip in the margins, out of habit more than necessity, and tried to fight down the confused hurt rising in him as they left the restaurant.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale started. The demon was two steps ahead of him, opening the door of his Bentley for Aziraphale to climb in and gracefully sweeping around to the driver’s side.

“Crowley, I—“ He tried again, the engine kicked into life with the radio playing a bit too loudly. Crowley finagled it to a more reasonable level, without so much as acknowledging the angel’s words.

“Crowley!” He reached over to touch the demon’s arm and felt the way he practically flinched backwards with a grit of suddenly fanged teeth.

This would typically be the time Aziraphale would fall silent, place his hands primly in his lap and resolutely allow the uncomfortable silence to swell between them. Crowley would drop him off, speed towards his loft or wherever he went in moods like this, tyres squealing the whole time, and wouldn’t hear a word from the demon for weeks on end.

Since the Notalypse, they’d been spending so much time together. Peaceful tipsy evenings, friendly little arguments on the proper plant care techniques, cozy lunches in when it rained, overwhelmingly sweet touches and kisses here and there. It had all been so lovely and domestic, the idea of being apart for so long now was practically unthinkable. The thought made Aziraphale’s chest seize up with an unknown panic, certain that if Crowley sped off now, they’d never regain the same warm ease he’d grown so fond of.

He pursed his lips. Bravery, he knew, was not a one-off thing.

“I’m not sure what I’ve done, Crowley, but I’d like to know how to properly apologize at the very least,” he said, as bluntly as he could find it in himself to. Crowley hadn’t moved the car yet, the rumble and quiet lull of that Mercury fellow filling the spaces. Aziraphale stared at his friend, unmoving, and watched the stony blank look fold inwards just a little.

“You haven’t done anything, angel,” Crowley sighed, and it sounded so painfully weary, so tired, the panic welled up in Aziraphale’s chest stronger than ever.

“Then, something I haven’t done?”

Crowley’s brows rose and fell, his lips went thin and flat. _Aha_ , he thought grimly.

Aziraphale shifted closer, covering Crowley’s hand that was gripping the wheel so tightly the bone white was starkly visible. His own heart wavered at the dredges of absolute pain radiating from his dearest friend.

“What is this, Aziraphale,” Crowley bit out, and it wasn’t a question at all. He looked strained, a mask of anger covering the palpable confused hurt emanating from him. He had to know Aziraphale could feel it, hands pressed together as they were, that he’d know this tangle of emotion as bright as the north star was something entirely else.

Aziraphale felt like crying, he wasn’t sure he knew exactly why.

“Crowley?”

“This, what is all of this. The, the plants and. The kissing. And there’s…You bought a new bed and you don’t even _sleep_ , so it’s all. I don’t know what you’re looking for, Aziraphale, _I don’t know what you want_.”

Aziraphale blinked. “What I want? I thought that was obvious, my dear.”

Crowley growled, finally letting go of the steering wheel and turning the car off with a violent twist. He spun towards the angel, holding his hand tightly. “What. _Is._ This,” he lifted their entwined fingers. “I don’t know what- look. I’d give you anything you asked for, you know I would. I’d go to these beaches and all of it if you wanted, I’d take you any restaurant you like, I’ll give you all of my plants if it meant that much to you, hell, I went against bloody Satan already, I’m sure I could take on heaven itself if you wanted it.”

Aziraphale’s throat was tight, his vision wobbly. “I know you would, dear boy, I wouldn’t ask it of you. I wouldn’t ask anything more of you than you already are, Crowley.”

“Fine, that’s fine, bloody brilliant, but you _are_ Aziraphale. You’re asking me to be what I’m _not._ ”

Something in Aziraphale’s gut swooped low, a burning horrible thing. “I… Crowley, what in heavens are you…”

Crowley sighed and pulled their hands away. “I get it, really. The fear is a hard one to shake, and I thought. I thought, fine, sure. Maybe we’ll never get passed this, maybe that’s all this is, and the kissing was great and all. I thought, okay, can’t have the rest, none of that strolling in public all gooey and doe eyed stuff, this is fine for now. But I can sense fear the way you sense all that holy stuff, and I _know._ I know it’s not real. And then you go on about v _acations_. About _perfect romantic evenings. And honeymoons?”_

He shook his head. “Don’t give me this, Aziraphale. I’ll go where you go, you know I will, you _asked_ me to and I _will_. Too much of a coward to do anything else, but I can’t. I can’t pretend it doesn’t mean more to me, I’m sorry. Not as good of a liar as I’d like, I guess.”

Aziraphale felt as though he were reading a script from a play he hadn’t known he’d walked into, as if he’d stumbled in and picked up the wrong characters lines, and had to figure out the plot until this point. Or rather, like he’d been seeing a painting in one way for years and had suddenly been forced to look at it a different way, and realized the whole thing was entirely something else.

He lifted a shaky hand, and carefully slid off Crowley’s glasses. Crowley let him, _Crowley let him._ That meant something, he knew, in between all these heartbreaks.

“I don’t understand.” He begged, _say it slower, you know I can’t keep up._

“Course you don’t,” Crowley looked away. “Look it’s fine. Just, we’ll go back to the friends bit and I’ll get over it.”

 _Oh,_ but Crowley’s eyes were so pained, so wounded and impossibly fond in ways that should cancel each other out. _He loved him_ , Aziraphale knew. _Crowley loved him and he was hurting him, somehow._

“ _Please,_ Crowley.” He whispered.

Crowley’s expression grew even more sharp, more hurt and conflicted. “Don’t, I can’t. I can’t tell you no. You know that, so _don’t.”_

“Crowley, I… I care for you.” He placed a hand on the demon’s cheek. Crowley made a noise like a wounded creature, a strangled sob but quieter, like he refused to let it out any louder. He brushed his thumb gently under that tragically pained gaze.

“I know, angel.” _But it wasn’t enough,_ Aziraphale realized.

“I thought. Our talk, before. Hadn’t I made it clear?”

Crowley groaned, a terribly torn thing. “Me, beside you. That’s what you said, and I am. Of course I am where else would I go? But you don’t… you don’t know what the rest does to me.”

Aziraphale could hardly breathe, “Crowley, I love you.”

“Don’t,” Crowley’s voice was dangerously wavering now. “You _can’t,_ Aziraphale.”

He leaned in, catching Crowley’s gaze, “I do, silly boy, I do. I love you more than I can understand, so much so I fear it will swallow me whole.”

Crowley turned his head, pressed a frantic and urgent kiss against his palm. “You _shouldn’_ t. You shouldn’t fear it, Aziraphale. It’s me, right through, always taking more and more of you because I’m too greedy not to. I asked you to pick me, to give up heaven and pick _me_ , and you couldn’t. You’re the only good thing about that place, you know that? So, you can’t,” he choked on his words, opening his eyes with a pain so raw it stole Aziraphale’s breath. “You’re going to chose them again, and it’ll be the right thing to do because you could never be wrong, and I’m going to have to let you because _you’re the only good thing about all of them, and they can’t lose you_.” 

“I wouldn’t,” Aziraphale said, firmly.

Crowley pressed another kiss to the inside of his wrist and placed Aziraphale’s hand back down. “It’s alright, Aziraphale. I know it’s me, somehow. Tempting you into things like always. All I ask is you stop making me _hope_.”

With that, with the quiet defeat in Crowley’s voice, Aziraphale saw the years between them from a whole new angle.

An angel who constantly highlighted the divide between them, who played hot and cold with the concept of mere friendship even millennia later. A demon who never fit in with his lot, who did everything, constantly everything to make it all easier for his only friend. Who charged into danger, just to save the angel from having to get his hands dirty, from having to realize the complexities of morality around them. He saw their meeting at the arc, the way Aziraphale had stood stiffly and pretended like the deaths of all the humans around him wasn’t tearing at him, the way he pretended to not have overflowing empathy, the way he struggled to be like the others above.

He thought of Gabriel, ready to destroy everything without any pretense or pre-amble, who made executive decisions about murder that he had no right to claim. He thought of Gabriel and Uriel and Michael, and their cold indifferent stares.

He saw his demon, his Crowley, fighting to hold onto scraps of hope for centuries that Aziraphale might open his eyes and realize he would never fit in. That fitting in would take everything about Aziraphale that made him Crowley’s exact counter part. He saw Crowley, trying desperately to shove his love down into packaged boxes, easier to squash down and let pile up in the darkness where it wouldn’t scare Aziraphale, where it could be at the angel’s pace. Crowley, bending everything in him into portions that would be easier for Aziraphale to handle, cutting off parts of himself to fit what Aziraphale needed from him.

Aziraphale, fondly smiling at him, thanking him, calling him _nice_ and then filling in that divide between them anyways. Categorizing demons as a whole as liars, as foul, as antithesis’ to everything Aziraphale held most high; using these as reasons for every no, for every denial, for every fear swelling in him, and then turning around and throwing it all back at Crowley who’d done nothing other than simply _be there._

 _“Nice? I am not nice,”_ Crowley had said, had growled at him, because despite everything they’d thrown to the wayside over the years, Aziraphale still hadn’t been able to choose him. Because if Crowley was _nice_ , if they weren’t inherently miles and miles apart, then it should be easy to chose him.

It should have been easy; it always should have been.

And Crowley, content to hold onto the scraps of affection Aziraphale threw his way, content to be halfway miserable for all his years. Aziraphale had convinced him he wasn’t worth the bravery, hadn’t he? Aziraphale had dug it into his bones and his marrow that he would never be enough, because he’d tried everything, done everything Aziraphale had asked and then some, and still Aziraphale couldn’t. Crowley, heart constantly stomped on and beaten down, still afraid for Aziraphale. Still willing to put aside his own wants and supposed greed for the angel’s best interest. Still afraid for his angel, of what letting himself fall would truly mean. Crowley fearfully convinced that if Aziraphale loved him _now_ , it had somehow been because he hadn’t packed everything down enough. That he’d been tempted into it, like their proximity would have tainted his angel.

“Crowley, you mustn’t, you…” Aziraphale choked out, and he could barely see him beyond the tears and the pain _. I’m sorry isn’t enough_ , he knew. _Would never be enough._ He couldn’t stop though, the litany of apologies fell from his lips like pleas, like fervent prayers to no one at all. _Sorry, I’m so sorry._

“Oh, oh no, angel, please. Don’t cry, I’m sorry. I… It’s really not so bad as all that, honest. Shh, Aziraphale, please stop crying.” Crowley was reaching for him, pressing his palms to Aziraphale’s cheeks, the back of his neck, running a hand through his curls, frantic and so, so lovingly. It made Aziraphale’s heart bleed, his chest crack entirely open, he sobbed harder.

“I’ve done this,” he managed, and squeezed his eyes closed as his shoulders shook. “I’ve _hurt_ you. All these years, I. I thought it was right, I’d wanted to be _good_ , and. Oh, oh my dear.”

Crowley had fallen, had been falling, and Aziraphale had just watched. Hadn’t caught him after all, just convinced himself that keeping his distance was the kinder act for the both of them. _What a fool I’ve been._

“Shh, shh, you are good, I swear angel you _are_. It’s all me, just. Forget I said anything, we can go, alright? Fiji or Hawai’i or…. Or I hear Mexico’s lovely, we could picnic out there, by the coast. Whatever you want, angel, please.”

Aziraphale shook his head, pleadingly looking up at Crowley with everything in him. _I do love you, Crowley. I love you; I love you. Damn my cowardice and everything I am, but I can’t find the words to tell you._

That furrowed brow was still there, the unease and caution, but beneath it all, a truly breathtaking whirlwind of love so absolute it could outside the sun. “Crowley,” Aziraphale said again, desperately. “I would choose you, if they asked.” It wasn’t the words he wanted, but it was honest.

Crowley pressed a kiss to his forehead, and Aziraphale felt him tremble. “I wouldn’t let you.” 


	2. But made the pieces part of me.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley hadn't meant to run away, not really. He could never stay away from Aziraphale completely. After the bookshop incident he'd developed an over paranoid sense of needing to Be There, just in case. Turns out, this time he shouldn't have stayed away at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the part where that sick fic tag comes in baybeeeee! It's also where I should remind you of the 'angst with a happy ending' tag as well! Just in case!

Aziraphale’s bookstore had become something of a haven over the years; a way of shutting out all of humanity while still resonating with the whole of it. Sort of like passively living in a bubble immersed in the center of an ocean without needing to get ones shoes wet. He’d packed it full of information, of knowledge and beautiful human words and thinking, of his favorites; the smell of parchment and ink, of candles and cocoa, warm lights and warm shades of browns and oranges. Everything he’d missed in all his years Above. All the things that spelled out heaven's antithesis, brimming with clashing colours and closed spaces. He loved it, thoroughly and whole heartedly.  It was more or less a collection of memories and exploits, signed copies from old friends who’d passed like grains of sand through his hands over the years, first editions and second editions and sometimes, rarely, third ones if he missed them too much. His bookstore was a postcard, a time capsule, a way of never entirely letting go while always continuously keeping up certain pretenses.

After the last eleven years, and the secret rendezvous and half truths before that? Aziraphale was very, _very_ tired of pretenses.

The bookstore had never been intended to be a store as it were, more a museum but one only he would fully appreciate and understand. A shrine to the ingenuity and beauty of humans to stave off the realistic cruelties that intertwined each period of time. He’d argued it’s existence as a camouflage to Gabriel,  _ ‘I need a reason to be among the people, to have them trust me with their concerns. Keeping my ear to the streets, as the humans say.’  _ Even still, parting with any singular book felt like tearing down a wall, removing an old photograph from its frame and watching it disintegrate before his eyes.

He supposed it was fitting, really. A book shop that wouldn’t sell a single book, and an angel- a being of ethereal love- who couldn’t love properly.

It wasn’t as though he didn’t love all creatures great and small, as was intended. More that his love was a placid thing, a veneer over a portrait one couldn’t quite see past. It was a calculable entry, tallied in a set number of years, a distributed amount of miracles, organized around a time schedule and a calendar and never meant to stretch past particular dividends. It was a heavenly sort of love, all in all. It was an empty love. 

He’d been certain for years that the way heaven loved was a complete thing. A whole sunset dripping gold and an array of colors so bright it was impossible to catch them all. Heaven was love after all, it was him that was likely the problem, he just couldn't see all the hues. That’s why he always felt hollow, that was why every emotion was muted and stiff, because there was so much he could only process one piece at a time. What a fool he’d been, thinking Gabriel or Michael held any portion of the full kaleidoscope when they could barely find anything beyond indifference for each other. When the cold smiles passed Aziraphale’s way shone through with boredom no matter how high the regard.

He remembered thinking, as Gabriel commended him for his work on the concept of Crowdfunding, not that Gabriel had understood a word of what he'd said (an entirely human idea, in all actuality), that if he could only do just a little bit better, the validation would feel real. The greys and whites would be enough, if he could just be better. Easier to hold himself to a higher standard than to admit that the bar would always be wildly out of reach, and had been since the start.

All the while, of course, he’d been building a coven of all sorts of warm hues and words, like a buffer between the blank nothing of Upstairs. Almost like a buoy in a turbulent sea, something to let him catch his breath for a moment so that the emptiness would be more manageable. If a certain demons presence seemed to draw out all the reds and oranges and blues, like the perfect contrast and complement, like he’d subconsciously been mirroring the warmth in a pair of yellow eyes while picking shades for paint and lights, that was surely a coincidence.

The thing was, demons weren’t supposed to love at all. Weren’t supposed to have any left. Aziraphale knew Crowley had never been anything but a contradiction in that way, that he screamed love in every move, but he supposed he’d never quite understood exactly how different their love was. How his was steeped in variables and quantifiable data and percentages, while Crowley’s ran screaming in fireworks and race car spreads of highlighter yellows painting everything with hints of exhilaration so bright it pulled something more from one’s chest than they’d previously known existed. How Aziraphale's love was technical, disinterested, self serving, meanwhile Crowley was ‘ _ don’t thank me’s _ and showing up in the nick of time and  _ ‘just thought I’d pop by with this expensive brand of wine I happen to know is your favorite’. _

Aziraphale had always assumed they were at least near equal, if Crowley allowed himself to admit that he loved at all, that is. He’d thought the two of them on the same page; understanding that these things only needed time, that there was danger with even thinking the thoughts they did, that they both dreamed in hypotheticals but knew what was at stake.

He’d never pictured his no’s extended beyond a divide set before they’d even met, that Crowley had seen it as an endless torrent of meteorites and Aziraphale had set his foundations on a ground that no longer existed.  He’d never imagined that his ‘I love you’ would be a hole in the side of an already sunken ship, that it could be gasoline on a wildfire. He’d never thought it would  _ hurt. _

Maybe he’d been building his books around him to avoid the world all along, and in the process built himself inwards. Become painfully naive and idealistic in matters of the heart as much as matters of the head.

_ ‘You’ve been a bit of a fallen angel’ _

Aziraphale felt nauseated, standing amidst his bookstore. The absence of Crowley for the past few weeks had been a steadily yawning singularity, sapping all of the light and colour from his world in bits and portions. He felt it everywhere. The Carl Sagan books on the universe had all but collapsed inwards with the weight of Aziraphale’s memories of Crowley’s drunken ramblings on the subject. The poetry books seemed shallow, joyless. Mocking. All the words he thought he’d known so well suddenly carried more meanings than he knew how to parse, all clamouring for his attention and embarrassment.

Of course he hadn’t loved enough, of course his love meant nothing. How could it? In the face of six thousand years, his was a candle flickering against a backdrop of a supernova. All his attempts to create a home away from home, one that felt more like his than anything else, were just cowardice. Not brave enough to actually take the leap or say no, only to create a secret double life and force Crowley to be both a part of it and not at all. The colours hurt to look at, now. He'd waited too long to make a choice, and in doing so been making a choice clear all along. He'd hurt his other half, his best friend, so immensely and irreparably, the demon couldn't stand to be near him.

The coziness of his shop felt cloying, now. Overwhelming. Every inch of it wanted his attention, to notice how he'd bought that particular book because it had made him think of duck ponds, or the way that poem had reminded him of late night dinners, or how the gardening books he hadn't read in years seemed to echo with a string of secret smiles across acres of land and inside jokes they'd never voiced. 

He’d started packaging them up, at some point. It had begun almost as an unthinking motion, a need to be clear of all the memories and thoughts and words so he could think. After he’d cleared the entire back half— not even stacking any in a particular order, mixing editions with other editions and signed copies with new useless ones— the action had become a compulsion, a frenetic need to have it all gone. Elsewhere, in the dark corners of the storage room he’d wished up as dark and forgotten as possible, stacking boxes upon boxes of his most precious items in the nothing.

Aziraphale from a few weeks ago would be devastated at the mistreatment. The Aziraphale at present thought it fitting.

_ Maybe afterwards, _ he told himself,  _ when they’re gone, then I can see where I’ve gone wrong. Then it will be clear. _

Afterwards, of course, standing in the empty carved out husk of a shop he’d been building for hundreds of years, there was only him. Only the dim musty lights, the dusty rug, the old couch, and the coffee table.  The settling had begun then, probably. With an  _ old boy, whatever will you do now?  _ With the resounding weight of  _ I don’t know.  _ He’d been tarrying and dithering so long, he supposed he’d never given himself a direction on his own terms. He swallowed back tears for the twentieth time, squared his shoulders, and tried to smile when he stepped out for the day.

Crowley hadn’t stopped by once in so many weeks, not to see the slow upending or the finished shell. Aziraphale felt his absence like a carving knife in an open wound, and supposed that too was understandable.

Crowley hadn’t meant to keep away, not really. Of course, he’d set out to stay away entirely, but in the sort of way one says to oneself knowing all the while one doesn’t mean a word of it.

He’d taken a stroll around England, after their big talk to clear his head. Suddenly, he’d decided to go for a jaunt around all of Europe, check out Paris for the first time since the whole guillotine incident. He’d gotten caught up somewhere around Greece, not for any particular reason other than that it wasn’t his forebodingly empty flat and it wasn’t anywhere that would remind him of the ice pick currently clawing at his chest. Nestled in for a drinking binge that had stretched into weeks and found himself somewhere entirely different and riddled with multiple tiny ice picks. 

It wasn’t as if he was mad at the angel, or upset with him, really. It was more an indeterminate panicked emotion than anything smouldering or livid. Something to do with the “I love you,” that kept ringing around in his head and creating little cracks and things he couldn’t patch over. More along the lines of a short-fast denial, a packaging up of emotions that didn’t appear to be working quite as well as it had been. 

Sitting around in his loft, he’d felt cornered. As though he’d been given the endless reality of a car and an open road, and watched it seal off. He wasn’t Hell’s servant, now. Incredibly. No more ominous threatening messages, no more insurances, no more weak excuses that were somehow easily bought because that was how Beelzebub did things, apathetically. It was too much, probably, but he was hooked. They’d be back eventually, he knew, with the whole hell and heaven versus humans thing. A frightening thought to anyone who hadn’t seen the ingenuity and creativity of the human mind, things that neither Gabriel or Hastur could understand. It was terrifying to think about what might happen if either of them discorporated, but then, they’d been doing a pretty bang up job avoiding that on their own anyways, recent events aside. Those things should be enough of a reason to be panicked, and yet, he only felt an odd hysterical relief.

“I’d choose you, if they asked,” Aziraphale’s voice reminded him, and he felt cold all over once again. 

He couldn’t stay away from Aziraphale forever, though. In much the same way the angel had always carried a weakness shaped like sugared confections and five-star restaurants, Crowley’s own was shaped in wildly out of fashion waistcoats and perpetually wild white hair. Despite all his posturing, he was inherently still a demon, and indulgence was his favorite sin just as much as Aziraphale found himself falling into it.

If he’d had any sense, he’d have kept his careful distance the second he’d understood what his mooning and doe eyes and inability to watch anything else truly meant. And yet, he’d indulged and indulged again, taking the angel to new restaurants just to watch the delight spark across his perfect features, bringing him pastries and chocolates just for the slow fond smile that sent his chest all atwitter. He kept on indulging well past the point of no return and found himself directly smack into love, and worse, the kind of sky streaming, star rewriting over dramatic poetic kind of love all the humans seemed so set on. The kind of love that burrowed itself right there next to the bit of you that defined everything you were and thought it nice to write one name in quiet script where it would never be removed.

A terrible thing for a demon who really should know better, an even worse thing for a demon who absolutely had no choice from the beginning. Same demon who’d offered up choice to humanity, ironically enough; falling in love in the sort of all at once jumping inwards to the deep end full bodied motion that meant he hadn’t had time to catch his breath first.

Drowning for Aziraphale really wasn’t so bad, all in all. It meant long chats and excited ramblings that made blue eyes positively sparkle, it meant bouts of impossible stubbornness and easily swayed dives into pure hedonism; it meant duck ponds and restaurants, museums and plays, and a couch in a dingy book shop that somehow always felt exactly like where he belonged. Drowning, as a whole, though, also meant the eventuality of the whole _drowned_ part of things. The unfortunate slap in the face of reality that things wouldn’t be peaceful and easy forever, which the angel seemed to be incapable of doing anything but remind Crowley of. The reality being that no matter how deep the expanding abyss of adoration and frustration and pure elation in Crowley’s heart grew, it could never possibly be enough.

Didn’t matter that Crowley loved him with everything he had and then some, because Aziraphale was an angel. He was the only angel in fact that shone in the whole bloody place, the only one that rivaled all the stars he’d worked so hard to build in the first place. Ineffability be damned, he would always be an angel so long as God decided heaven meant stubbornness and passion and doing what was right even when it was impossible. Crowley, selfish being that he was, had tried to have the angel choose him over all of that, and watched it burn up in the atmosphere immediately after. He didn’t blame Aziraphale though, because he’d chosen right in the end hadn’t he? Deciding to believe in the best when there was nothing ‘best’ left? Deciding to stay and fight heaven and hell for a world he loved just because he had looked at it and found it more worth loving than either side?

Aziraphale could never choose wrong if he tried, Crowley had realized. And he’d not chosen Crowley.

Maybe Crowley had spent the better part of his existence building up a fire from a tiny spark, stupidly hoping and wishing for something that couldn’t be, but that didn’t mean he had to keep choosing to be selfish. He could love Aziraphale for what he was, everything he was, and have that include the bits of him that would never love him entirely back. It was only that when Aziraphale had said those words, he’d looked for all the world like he thought he meant them.  That was enough to break Crowley’s heart all over, for the angel. For his best friend who wanted to give him something he’d not properly earned, only because Crowley wanted it. For the angel who wanted to love in a way he wasn’t capable of. It hurt more than any of the realizations the demon had been grappling with for months, to think of how desperately Aziraphale wanted to believe he could ever chose Crowley, as if he hadn’t already had centuries of chances and resolutely stuck to the only right path there was.

So, no, Crowley hadn’t meant to avoid the angel. He’d meant to give them both the space to breathe, the space for Aziraphale to get his head on straight and realize he’d only ever done the right thing in his own way and no one, not even Crowley should ever ask anything different.

Maybe he’d also meant to run away a _little._

But he’d known he would be back, that he couldn’t stay away. The viscous fear that something could happen, especially now with discorporation being more painfully frighteningly mortal sounding in sentence than ever, kept him close by. No Alpha Centauri, not when Aziraphale might need him still.

Four months was a long time to stay away, however. They’d gone years and years apart before, of course, but then there was something inherently adhesive about raising a kid together. About working to foil their respective bosses together like conniving school children. About all of the past eleven odd years, really. He’d have probably stayed away longer, however, too cowardly to swallow down his heartbreak (one of countless others that all hurt just as achingly deep), if not for the message.

He’d been skipping round between the Baltic sea, taking a few weeks in Latvia here and a few more in Scotland there, never settling long enough to need to bother with a cover. Never stopping long enough for his thoughts to catch up. The message, well, note, rather, had appeared under a door jam during a weekend tryst in Finland. He’d nearly settled down for a nap- promising himself that he’d wake up at a reasonable time of merely a few days, regardless of the emotional constipation he was barely weathering- when the fizzbang of the note had startled him into painful alertness.

It was a black charred thing, half crumpled and still glowing with embers around the edges.

A commendation note, from a boss that was no longer his boss.

_ “Demon Crowley- ex employee (current bastard), congrats on the work. We still hate you and all but the office staff are impressed with your off hours escapades anyways. Hasn’t been done since the pre-Eden days. Might consider not removing you immediately if you’d fancy another one of those ‘Powered Points’ on how you’ve done it.” _

Crowley scanned the words, froze, and retraced his scanning. Then he read them again. And again.

“What in the blasted ever-loving—” he muttered to himself, before the sinking feeling in his gut spread into a full free falling ten-ton solid lead balloon.

In the days before the whole apple deal, there’d been a vague sort of epidemic. Not one any angel ever discussed, as the whole lot was rather resistant to any sort of chat regarding anyone being less than flawless. A strange bout of Something no one seemed to be able to explain. Heaven liked to blame Hell for the mess, and Hell gladly took credit, but it was more or less an unspoken secret that no one below had any sodding idea what they were on about.

A few angels here and there started going all funny, greying out almost. Started with a strange blankness, then a shocking lack of power, and finally and most distressingly, feathers falling out. Not burning up, not smoking from pure fluffy white into sleek dark raven wings, just. Falling out entirely.

The whole effect was nightmarish, even for a demon. Wings were the core of any ethereal creature, divine or otherwise. They were connected to their very centers, conduits of power and anchored directly into their true selves. An angels wings were to be cared for, a demons to be preened. Touching either was widely considered a rather huge No-No, let alone removing a feather. It was said the act of pulling out a feather, any of them not just the primaries, was more excruciating pain than words could hope to fit around. Feathers falling out was the worst sort of omen, something ancient and immaterial and wholly unfix-able. 

Crowley felt a well of something in him, more immense and totalizing than panic, something that ripped through him in sheer white shades of unadulterated denial, a litany of  _ ‘no, no. No!’  _ In the instant the gears in his brain started to whirl and connect thoughts and implications, he'd entirely skimmed over the most important puzzle piece, and it had hit him all at once like a car careening on a highway road. 

At the bottom of the letter was a single white feather, longer than any bird, flickering with residual power as it shifted between planes of reality. It radiated an assortment of things, light mainly, but intertwined with a dullness like a muffled connection to a choir song. It radiated warmth, a particular warmth not unlike cozy rooms and warm cups on cold nights. Crowley’s heart that was not a heart stopped, started, and started again in desperate fear as he processed all of this, along with the impossibly familiar smell of parchment and ink and dust, the sugar sweet aroma of a favorite cake shop, the feeling of sunlight in a wide open park, the touch of leather and screeching tyres, of faint charcoal and brimstone.

A feather, no blood or ichor or anything to suggest a forced removal. A fallen feather,  _ Aziraphale’s  _ fallen feather.

Crowley was miracle-ing himself into the Bentley, and the Bentley into high gear before he’d even thought to move. “Aziraphale, you great bloody bastard, _ hold on _ .” 

Maybe he should have pieced it together faster. The slight hesitation constantly following Crowley, the flicker of some otherworldly panic, the stiffness like he couldn’t quite settle into his skin. Aziraphale had thought it to be nerves, at first. Six thousand years of learning each other and flipping the script had them both a tad on their toes. For Aziraphale, it was almost unreal how natural it seemed. He kept slipping into habits, old thought patterns and catching some slimy fear climbing up his throat, or a need to put a space where there shouldn’t be. Checking over their shoulders, reluctance to link fingers obviously. He’d thought Crowley to be experiencing the same, like deciding to stare into the sun after millennia, the instinct had to be beaten down every once in a while.

Aziraphale would be a liar if he pretended it wasn’t on the whole front, entirely overwhelming. Some days sunk past him like a dream, light and impossibly happy, a most tightly kept wish spread into technicolour twilight. Others sat on his teeth, prickled at his neck, made him fear a blink-and-you-miss-it punishment. He’d had an eternity to wrestle with his doubts, but still they circled. The difficulty with being trained to fear the Fall was that he was endlessly bracing for it, the burn that never seemed to come.

He didn’t feel much afraid of anything anymore. Wasn’t much to be afraid _of,_ he’d found, when you’d been slowly chasing away the only thing you’d wanted. That was the burn of it all, wasn’t it? That he’d been wanting Crowley since the church, since the books, since before books at all. He’d _wanted_ and he wasn’t supposed to want so he’d tucked it away with a ‘not now, not yet’ and assumed Crowley was doing the same. It quite wholly felt as though he’d already lost anything worth mattering. The earth would be fine, what with Adam’s rather strict order that they all ‘stop meddling’, and they hadn’t really done much to help stop things anyways. Humans were rather good at creating their own problems, yes, but they’d also figured out somewhere along the line how to fix them up as well.

All Aziraphale had seemed to learn had been the losing bits, the messing up parts. Never welcomed in heaven even though some awful part of him had wanted to, always with the wanting. Too afraid to be welcomed by the only one willing to catch him in return.

When the first feather had found its way into the empty spaces of his floorboards, he’d sort of just stared at it. The actual falling out bit hadn’t hurt, and yet the feather had just. Been there. He was pretty sure it was supposed to hurt, as deeply anchored as they were into his true form. Rather melodramatically he assumed his heart was in such great turmoil no other sensation could make it through and bemoaned that for a while before making a cup of tea and turning in for the evening.

The next morning, two feathers glittered back at him from the floorboards. He’d stared at them, thought an entirety of nothing at all, and placed them on his desk and continued his mindless dithering for the day.

The bookshop being permanently-temporarily closed, Aziraphale spent most of his days attempting to miracle nice things for anyone who traveled near enough outside for him to pick up on their wavelengths, as it were. Angels were made up of varying wavelengths, after all. Some stretching as high as the sky and beyond, right up until the last layer of atmosphere held everything inwards, some as short and vague as a breath. He’d quite enjoyed revelling in the stretching portions, before. Though he didn’t fly himself lately, he’d liked to feel tied to it all. The passing clouds in his lungs, syncopating rain evaporating and falling all at once, the arctic currents and the southern breezes the blood streams carrying all sorts of life towards his very center. It was a concert, a cacophony, a rising crescendo and falling hush, and it was all so beautifully mortal.

He’d felt so tethered to Her, then. The ties of Her love filling and refilling his outlines endlessly, exaltingly. Gabriel’s pitying condescension meant nothing here, in the wisps of atoms whirring through the endless blue, the empty gazes were just crystalizing snowflakes, one amongst an infinite.

Now, of course, the idea was terrifying. He could stretch upwards, allow the bits of himself to cascade outwards and beyond and feel all the Love and Life like he’d never stopped breathing it in. Or, he could stretch and find blank, empty, nothing. He existed as a series of hypotheticals, these days. Always, always too cowardly to test for a confirmation.  It was for the best if he stayed inside. There were no books to sell and no need for customers, Muriel could make do with her biscuits and croissants and less chats with him, the world would keep on turning. Adam had made sure of that. No need to step outside into that big blue world and see the mess he’d made of himself, the horrible rends he’d torn in everything, no need to take stock of how limited his bubble of selfish consideration truly was.

No need to see how pathetic he’d become, he was fine indoors. Indoors where the old lamps cascaded trailing yellow hues along empty shelves and desks. Where the walls echoed his pacing back at him. Better, then, that he was alone. No one else to see the mess his wings were making.

He made neat little stacks, feathers upon feathers, lining the empty shelves. He slept, for the first time, and found no joy in it but kept on sleeping anyways. He trained his form out of the need for sustenance, for tea, for anything. He found himself, drifting. Cowardice, still, trying to fold into the grey static to avoid what he’d made. The divots and canyons he’d reinforced and cut into his friend wouldn’t heal with time, but Crowley was avoiding him anyways. The world hadn’t needed him anyways. Heaven had likely never needed him, not with humans electing to take up all the hard work. There was just, little point to it all.

His hands stretched into moonbeams and sunlight, the way it filtered in and picked up dust motes and swirled them about. His thoughts trailed outwards, sands in a broken vase. He grew tired, emptier. His feathers lined the shelves, his wings ached and ached until they didn’t, and still Crowley didn’t return.

He stopped straying outdoors even for a bite to eat after a while, and then shortly after, stopped the pretense of moving up to his flat above the shop. Stopped drinking tea or reading or any of the other stupid mindless human things he’d picked up over the years. Ruminating on the weight in his chest seemed proper, after all.

Guilt was a strange sensation, knowing he’d been directly responsible for some horrid outcome. Before, with the wars and the deaths and all the awful human things, he’d found it all quite out of his hands. Not his idea or a result of his meddling, he’d say, and try to pick up the little bits and add some happiness where he could. It was easier, he supposed, knowing there was a limit to what he could decide to help with, lest there be an angry note or a visit from Gabriel himself.

Now, he was un-tethered in every sense of the word. Could preform a thousand miracles if he felt like it, despite how exhausting that would be. Instead, he found himself sitting, grappling with the knowledge that he couldn’t blame heaven for the way he’d refused to even so much as call Crowley his friend, at the end. For the fact it had taken him being discorporated and losing virtually all of the earthly things that made him, him, to actually stand up for what he wanted.

It was only him to blame for the shuttered scared caution in Crowley’s eyes. Only him, and the enclosed nothing, and the shelves of feathers he didn’t know what to do with.

When Crowley returned, he’d fix this place up. Maybe he couldn’t stand to look at the books but he could make use of the space somehow. When Crowley returned, he’d talk to the demon about moving somewhere nice, somewhere just for the two of them, if he’d have him. When Crowley returned he’d apologize, he’d place kisses everywhere across Crowley’s eyebrows, his closed fluttered eyelids, his high cheekbones, his boney fingers, a thousand kisses and then a thousand more. He’d tell the demon every day that he was loved, had always been loved, and that he was sorry for all the moments of doubt his uncertainty had sewn. When Crowley returned he’d be better, he thought. Get all these feathers sorted right back where they’re meant to be, and let Crowley decide the pace for once. Even if that pace wasn't forwards in direction at all. 

He just needed to rest up before then, that was all. Maybe he hadn’t moved from his chair in three days, holding a long cold cup of cocoa he hadn’t drank. Maybe he was finding it harder and harder to focus, to remind himself he had lungs and a heart and a pair of hands that were put on the right way up. Maybe blinking was a chore, and thinking was tiring in a bone deep way that touched on his deeper center even through the mortality. 

He’d allow himself this pause, just this little pause.

The world kept dipping in and out of focus in strange ways, like he were on the verge of falling asleep, but with his eyes wide open. It was almost like a pane of glass had cropped up between him and the world around him, but that suited him just fine, really. Less to distract him, less to take up his waning strength. If he could just sit here, just for a little longer, he was sure he’d feel strong enough. 

When Crowley returned it would be a big day, after all, he thought, muggily to himself. He’d need to save up his energy for then. And if he didn't return, well. 

Sitting wasn't a bad way to spend an eternity. 

Crowley knew Aziraphale would never hurt him, not intentionally. Aziraphale could never hurt anything if he set his mind to it. For all his warrior Principality days of Pre-Eden, he had the delicate hands of an accountant, of a librarian. He got choked up when people accidentally stepped on worms, after all. 

He’d also always known Aziraphale wasn’t particularly good at people. He understood them, on a technical level, yes. Enough to know how to chase away a customer, enough to fill out taxes and fit in within the bustle of Soho without arising too much suspicion. Out of the two of them, he was the only one who’d bothered with a pretense of a mortal job. It was only that the angel over thought things. He saw interactions like a test, a social meter. He’d had a few mortal friends over the years, but he sort of collected them. Sought out the most beautiful poets or authors, the talented up and coming artists, like he could pick their brains of phrases and explanations enough for him to break through that barrier to genuine connection. 

It wasn’t that Aziraphale didn’t understand what love was, he did on a basic level, only that it was a flattened out thing. A definition rather than an emotion. An empathetic being derived straight from stardust, who waxed on about the importance of all god’s creatures, who gave placating smiles and nods and wanted nothing to do with tea-time, thank you. He’d always sort of found it a compliment that none of those smile-nods had ever been directed his way. Taken it like a badge of honour. But he’d figured that was where it ended, polite genuine interest and care. Of course Aziraphale loved him, you didn’t spend six thousand years around a person to not pick up on tidbits like that, but he’d thought it the generic love Aziraphale felt towards a nice phrase or a new piece of parchment. A ‘oh, well this is nice’ sort of feeling. 

Maybe he could wrap his head around the prospect of Aziraphale loving him more than that, but he knew the ranking in the angels head would never place him much higher than ‘sushi’. Not when everything in his angel ached for approval from the Upstairs.

When Aziraphale started changing the script, kissing him surprised constantly, like it was his new favorite dish, he’d been tensing for the inevitable drop the whole time. This was the angel pushing his limits, now that he had none. This was his rebellion, in a temporary phase. He kept bracing for the end of it, he’d refused to let himself enjoy even a fraction of a moment, knowing it would hurt less like a neat slide of a knife between the ribs if he did, and more in a ‘implosion of his entire chest’ sort of manner. 

He was pretty sure he’d never even properly kissed Aziraphale back. 

Crowley didn’t really do regrets, usually. Well, he _did_ , but they were boxed up and shoved away in the back along with any other vulnerable emotion just in case anyone below decided to pop in for a check up. He didn’t let himself think on them, typically. A few humans dying here and there, well that was just sort of the way of things, wasn’t it. As long as it was his side doing all the awful kid murdery bits, or at least claiming credit for it, and heaven was intervening and mucking their plans up, wasn’t really anything worth thinking on. 

In reality, he regretted many things. Deeply. 

The truth of how angels fell wasn’t so much a conscious choice, not in the way the un-fallen angels liked to boast about. They didn’t just up and decide to rip out their hearts and hand them over with a polite _‘well, here you go. That’s that then, be seeing you around.’_ It was more of a festering wound type of scenario. A crescendo of a dark pit that sunk its roots in and chased out all the light. For Satan and the rest of that lot, he supposed it had been a frustration that built slowly until it was well and truly hatred. The opposite of love, they said. When they were all full of resentment and bitterness and hatred, they’d already burned up the connecting bits to all that heavenly harmony junk. Not really anything much to snap apart, then. For Crowley, he’d always been a bit confused about that whole thing. He’d never hated the Almighty, or even really the rest of the feathery lot Up There. In fact, his deepest most well kept secret was that he loved Her, and felt generally apathetic about the rest. Except Gabriel, due to more recent events, but that was rather besides the point (and Gabriel utterly deserved it). 

A demon who loved. Dagon would say it was an impossibility, likely. That was the thing with demons in general, though. They lacked a proper understanding of any emotion, being as generically broody and disinterested as they were. Hatred wasn’t really all that unlike love, when you got down to it. Both were enveloping fires, just at different temperatures. Both brought great bursts of the need to act, and love so easily could be warped into something like hatred rather quickly if one set their mind to it. 

Crowley supposed that was what allowed him to skirt past the radar all these years; maybe he didn’t hate like he was supposed to, at least, his wasn’t an outward thing, but he did love. 

The frightening thing to realize, then, as Crowley sped faster than he’d ever dared to imagine the Bentley capable of, was that maybe, Aziraphale did too. Maybe Crowley had been categorizing love in a set of limits, in the outlined box of the way he understood things. To him, love was a burning and overwhelming thing. A blazing fire. It had to be, to camouflage properly. 

Aziraphale, then, had needed his to become a background hum, a disguised additional note in an otherwise bland harmonious tune. He’d had to ignore his, in the same way that Crowley had needed to fuel his.  Aziraphale must have loved, must have done, because Crowley had only ever heard of feathers falling out of the ones who loved _ too much.  _

_ God and Satan and anyone else in between,  _ he thought, angrily punching the car radio into silence and imagining the Bentley travelling at the same speed as a jet plane with everything in him.  _ He couldn’t just be a little less than apathetic, hm? Had to go and make it torture for him.  _

The Bentley roared louder, speedometer flatly pressed to the limit and straining well beyond. “He’ll be fine,” he told himself, told the universe around him, told Aziraphale. “He’s fine, and he’s puttering around his shop like always, and I won’t be too late because I always come for him. I always do. He knows that, so he’s fine. And I’ll kiss him back properly this time, and have some wine, and he’ll. Be.  _ Fine _ .” 

Then, unable to hold up the flippant tone with the flickering feather on the seat beside him, too afraid to pretend:  _ Just keep him alive a bit longer, if you ever loved him back. Please, a little longer. _

Seeing the book shop should have been a relief, really. The place had held nothing but fond memories for centuries at this point, something he had refused to admit felt a lot more like a home than his empty flat. Usually, the place radiated. A bit of that holy love thing filing it up to the brim, he supposed. Making it hard to look at, some days.

As the Bentley’s tyres squealed on the pavement, it seemed. Dull. Like every other building beside it. Smaller, somehow. Dread coalesced in his heart like a fist, pushing out anything other than cold, mounting, fear. He leaped out of the door before the car had fully stopped, uncaring about the onlookers, or the smell of burnt rubber, or any of it. 

The book shop’s curtains were pulled tight, the sign on the door flipped, not unusual for his angel who seemed to abhor customers on the best of days. He glanced up at the midday sun with a wince. 

“Pardon, Mr. Crowley, was it?” A voice spoke up behind him, he shot a glare over his shoulder unthinking. And then backtracked abruptly as his brain caught up with him. 

“Oh, uh.” Her name started with an…. N? M? Maureen? Mavis? “ _Muriel!_ That’s it.”

She cocked a brow at him, her wispy greyed hair pulled back tightly in a stiff bun, and smiled tentatively. “I suppose it has been a few ages. You’re coming to work things out with Mr. Fell, then? Good, I had worried something had gone wrong between the both of you. Seemed a bloody shame, if you asked me.” 

“Oh uh, just an acquaintance, really. Checkin' in,” he said with a shrug, remembering the hot sting of Aziraphale’s hasty denial like scalding tea on his teeth. The doorknob resting under his hand seemed icy, abruptly. 

Muriel shot him a knowing and entirely exasperated Look.  _ Well, alright then. ‘Course the mortals can see through it when neither of them seemed to be bleeding capable. Six thousand  _ bloody _ years. _

“I’d hoped you’d come by sooner than later, though. Give him a chance to apologize,” she continued. Crowley opened his mouth, ready to defend himself before blinking. As the wily snarky one, he’d assumed it would seem more likely that he’d have to crawl back. Aziraphale always gave off a particular nice and prim aura that made him read as the more responsible of the two.

“Haven’t seen him in ages, you know. If you’re going in, give him one of these,” she passed along a box, steaming with fresh pastries. “Might have dug himself into a mess, but if you’re here he’ll be alright.” 

Crowley wanted to ask, well, a lot of things with that statement. “Ages?” He settled on. 

She cocked her head, grey eyes sorrowful. “Closed up his shop well and tight a few months back. Thought I saw him moving all his books, before then. Seemed emptier each time I stopped by, poor thing.” She patted his arm. “Best I let you check on him.” 

Crowley nodded, blankly. The dread in his chest turning vicious as he processed her words. She scuttled off down the road without another look, and Crowley shook himself. Moving his books?  _ Empty? _ He’d been here since Aziraphale first bought the place, it had never been empty. Aziraphale rarely attempted to organize them, either, afraid it would allow his customers easier access to the book they sought. He'd rather begun to thought Aziraphale hated the emptiness; he remembered what heaven had been like in the old days and it hadn't much changed. Although, he himself thrived in the concept of having his own space. 

Aziraphale staying cooped indoors, not ordering food or dining out, or feeding ducks? No mindless miracles just because he could and he liked to. That wasn't an Aziraphale he knew. That meant something awful, or worse. 

He swallowed roughly, and snapped a finger. The doors clicked open without a fuss, too loudly. Like there was no buffer to muffle the sound. 

“Aziraphale?” He called, and sharply inhaled. 

The walls were… barren. Not a book in sight. The entire store was carved out, hollow and far too dark. It looked old, somehow. Unloved. “Shit,” he managed. “Shit, shit- Aziraphale!” 

He hated this, immensely. Hated the dust lining the empty shelves, the way the building was so, so dreary and dark. Aziraphale had always kept it just a bit too dim, a talented insight for scaring off customers that Crowley’d even been impressed by, but it had never felt…. Cold. The kind of cold that sat too close to your heart than your skin. It had never been so abandoned in all their years. Well, except for the last time he’d been yelling through the place, he supposed. All but stumbling into the store, he couldn’t help but remember the panic. The way he’d been awfully and horribly certain that he Hadn’t Been There, that someone had gotten it into their heads that Aziraphale was causing them too much trouble. That the fires around them were of the hellish sort and he  _ hadn’t. Been there.  _

_ You’ve abandoned him again, though, haven’t you?  _

“Angel!” He called again, a little higher pitched. His voice echoed back at him ominously. He stepped around an empty shelf, gaze tracking frantically, before he caught the dull glow. The shelves seemed to almost pulse with faint light, actually, the more he let himself notice. 

Moving closer, he almost choked, the panic in his chest finally clawing outwards and squeezing his words off entirely. It wasn’t dust, he’d been seeing, not that there wasn’t far too much of the stuff as well. The shelves were lined with feathers, frighteningly, all shapes and sizes. All flickering the same way as the one tucked in his pocket. There were hundreds of them, lined up neatly along every shelf, piled up carefully on a desk, longer ones jutting out here and there. 

It was a nightmare, it was worse than a nightmare. 

“Az… Azira…” he lurched around a final shelving unit, desperate to make sense of all this, how this could have happened in a few months. How he hadn’t  _ noticed. Why had he left at all? _

The quiet backroom of the book shop was aglow with a faint lamp light, one that had clearly been left on too long and had begun dimming weeks ago. It was barely a light at all anymore, in the darkness of the shop, the orange light trailed weakly, sluggishly across a familiar table, a solitary chair, a couch…

And an angel, still as death. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't think I mentioned it last chapter, but the title is from Sorry by Nothing But Thieves and I really reccomend listening to that while reading if you want to be upset.


	3. And now it hurts what we've become

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for how long this took gosh. I got side tracked by work and other work and more work but I am not giving up on this fic! I should also say that the title is from 'Sorry' by Nothing but Thieves as are the chapter titles. There's probably going to be about two more I'd say. 
> 
> Anyways as always shout out to tai for keeping me motivated and letting me yell about good omens constantly, and my pal Ches for reading this over for me just so I could reassure myself it actually made sense and wasn't a nonsensical stream of consciousness.   
> This would be where that good old 'sick fic' tag comes in btw ;)

Finding Aziraphale, and the multitude of emotional processes that had simultaneously fired off in S.O.S. patterns immediately thereafter, had been an exercise in self-restraint for Crowley. One that he had wavered somewhere in the vicinity of entirely failing and combusting into little Crowley shaped bits in the face of. Spending six thousand years curling into whatever sunny spaces Aziraphale would allow had gone and made him fragile in odd ways. 

The rational, survival based part of Crowley’s brain at first had been completely overwhelmed by a panic alarm blaring of ‘Aziraphale’s hurt, he’s  _ hurt, do something _ you useless serpent’ over and over in increasingly frantic volumes. He’d dropped to his knees before he’d made the conscious decision to move, hands fluttering nervously around Aziraphale’s shoulders, his back, the place where his wings were stretching into ethereum. 

And God….. his _ wings... _

Luckily, the moment his gut clenched and dropped, the clinically detached rational side of him jumped in. _ ‘Make sure he’s still alive’, _ it said.  _ ‘Before you go cursing the universe this time, before you go thinking end times, make sure you _ know.’

He wasn’t sure if he could touch, if the demonic presence would somehow make this all impossibly worse somehow, but he couldn’t _ see _ Aziraphale. There was a film over all of it, a strange foggy thing and he couldn’t see that comforting warm spark or the flickering roll of a thousand eyes tucked politely behind his human form. It was like a coalescing and all encompassing nothing where Aziraphale should be. 

Beyond that, his second sight was a study in the worst sorts of fourteenth century inspired horror; Aziraphale’s wings had gone faded dusty grey, not black, but not the pure white he’d carried for centuries undauntingly. For Aziraphale’s sake he was at least relieved in part. A small, fleeting, measly relief, however. Barely worth noting in the face of how barren they were, how absolutely dreadfully skeletal. 

The bits that were grey were barely hanging on, it was nauseatingly full of patches of translucent skin underneath, like Aziraphale had pulled them all out, and leaking with pale flickers of light. They hadn’t been ripped out, though. There was no blood. Just a withered remain, a spindly dying tree. A tree wouldn’t have his lungs compressing, and that wild thing in his chest growing spikes and shards.

Wings weren’t like fingernails or split ends, they weren’t things Aziraphale could get set back to normal just by a trip to the barber or a nice coat of paint. Wings were fragmented mirrors, maybe; a reflection of the sun splayed out in fractals across a metaphysical cavern,, with the sun being the angel itself. The light, in technicolour intangibility, could tell you how bright the star was shining that particular moment, whether it was behind a cloud or broad daylight, but you would still know _ there was a star to be found.  _ No feathers was like the night time, perhaps the star couldn’t be seen but that didn’t mean the bloody thing had vanished. 

Greying withered feathers meant something far worse, something nearly impossible. A slow dying star giving its last pulse of life before the collapse. 

It was absolutely nightmarish, unthinkable, and this was _his_ _angel._

He catalogued all the wrong bits, then. Distantly keeping note of the symptoms, the way the awful greyness had spread inwards, where it was the worst. Like the washed out blue tinge to his lips, the clamminess of his cheeks, the utter and complete lack of breathing whatsoever. The last one was not on it’s own a particularly awful sign, it wasn’t as if they needed to breathe after all, but they did have to convince their human forms of certain livelihood aspects like blood and heartbeats which grew a tad difficult without the whole oxygen situation. 

Besides, Aziraphale was a creature of habit. 

He could feel something swirling in him, loud and high pitched. A frantic whine like a gas leak, blocking out everything, everything except his angel, and he’d closed his eyes. 

“You’re no bloody use to him like that,” he told himself firmly. Or tried to, his own voice was warbly and watery in a way he didn’t recognize. He couldn’t allow himself to dwell on the what if’s not until he  _ knew.  _

The thought that if Aziraphale wasn’t gone already, he might be watching his angel fading away in front of his eyes was a cruelty. God was many things but he’d never truly believed Her to be cruel, never so callous and intangibly, coldly unfair. Not when She’d gone and crafted the warmth in Aziraphale’s cheeks and the sparkle in his eyes. Not when She’d let him come back at all. To have him stumble in just in time to watch the center of his world implode like so much plasma and star stuff would be far worse than anything even the ninth realm of hell had to offer. 

She wouldn’t. Aziraphale wouldn’t. 

Aziraphale was  _ alive _ , he was going to be _ fine _ . He had to be, Crowley wouldn’t let his angel go where he couldn’t follow. He believed it more than he’d ever believed anything, more than the atoms that held each of their heartbeats in sync, more than the secret codes he’d woven into the night sky that shone in winks lightyears apart. Because he had to, because Aziraphale  _ was. Fine.  _

Then, Aziraphale had breathed. A shaky quiet thing, practically a sigh. It could have been a victory yell for all Crowley cared; he leaned over immediately, murmuring nonsense, all soft and soppy and painfully terrified in a way he didn’t know how to package. 

He decided there wasn’t a better option, (leaving him on the floor was out of the question), and gently turned the angel on his side, wincing at the thin reedy noise Aziraphale made in response. Aziraphale’s eyes weren’t closed entirely, the vague and glazed over crescent moon of nothing was unsettling in a devoid sort of way Crowley couldn’t name. Refused to name. (Wrapped around his teeth and his throat with something far too close to apathy, and that did not sit within the tartan packaged box he knew to be Aziraphale). 

His head lolled uncomfortably as Crowley stumbled to his feet with the angel draped across his arms. The air, stiff and stale since he’d arrived, seemed to pause. Anticipating. For a moment, it felt like gravity had coalesced on their exact location, like he’d done something dangerously out of orbit. Against the very written core of the earth. Then the moment snapped, and shifted around them with Crowley’s gesture as he forced it to let go.

He’d meant to place them in the sparse bedroom in his flat; the strange elastic pull of the book shop only seemed to allow Aziraphale the grace of resting on the couch a few short steps away. Crowley growled, and snapped again. 

_ You won’t take him _ , he thought viciously. _ You’ll have to take me too.  _

_ Gladly,  _ the gravity agreed, and expanded outwards indulgently. 

_ Ah _ , he realized, “She’s grown fond of you too, hasn’t she?” Crowley glanced around at the dusty, barren shop and the awful array of feathers. The warmth he’d always felt was still there, he noticed, just fragile. Nervous.  _ Worried. _

“Course she has,” his tone melted soft, wavering as he knelt down beside his angel. “Impossible to do anything but, with you.” He brushed his knuckle across Aziraphale’s pale cheek. He swallowed roughly. “What went wrong, angel? What went so wrong?” 

Aziraphale sighed almost, the air rattled weakly in his lungs, pulling up the dust with all the strength of a sunbeam. 

“I’m going to fix this,” he told that blank stare, fervently. “You hear me, Aziraphale? If I have to find all your pieces and put them back myself, I will fix this.”

_ Don’t leave me here.  _

  
  
  


The first week was the worst, Aziraphale was utterly unresponsive and the thin reedy thread of panic would amplify with every passing moment that Crowley didn’t check, that he wasn’t  _ sure.  _ He’d never known Aziraphale to be so quiet, not without a hum or a gasp or a tut at whatever story he’d found himself lost in, not without the quiet pleasant hum as he stirred his tea. There was always an air around him, something bubbling over with warmth and light, trying to pack itself inwards into comfortable cozy shapes and smiles. The entirety of the nothing unsettled him, activated some long forgotten predatorial sense he’d never quite tuned into properly around this one specific angel in the first place. It made him restless. 

Crowley placed a palm over Aziraphale’s heart and believed it would be right there thumping back at him, and it always was. (A part of him worried that if he let himself worry too loudly it might quit, however. And then he worried that he should be worrying more, or else Aziraphale wouldn’t think he needed to come back.) 

“What can I do, angel?” He muttered, pushing an errant limp curl away from Aziraphale’s clammy forehead. He felt like yelling, like shaking Aziraphale by the shoulders and demanding an answer, demanding the angel explain why he’d gone and let himself go all sideways and hopeless. Mostly, he felt like yelling at himself for being too afraid of hope to stay in the first place.

Not that Aziraphale would let that stand, he was sure.  _ “It’s not cowardice, darling,” _ he’d explain in that slightly condescending voice that meant he was very extra sure he was in fact correct on this topic.  _ “Your fear is ingrained, you know. Hope is an angelic thing, after all. Demons aren’t meant to have any lest it be tarnished immediately.”  _

“Right, angel,” he sighed. “You see what happens when you go and let yourself hope about things anyways.” 

He’d refused to move, for the most part. Snapping a blanket into existence, tea, any of Aziraphale’s books from wherever they’d been sent off too that so much as mentioned feathers. He miracled up a cloth to gently press on Aziraphale’s forehead, a few of his favorite meals just on the off chance it might make a flicker return, and was met with nothing but that blank distant stare. It all felt a bit unfathomable, like he’d gone and stumbled into a black hole on accident and found something that went far beyond his comprehension. Like he was clinging to the last bits of a good dream, fruitlessly. 

Hopelessly. 

But Aziraphale would be fine. Had to be, course he was. Crowley wouldn’t let him be anything less. 

The bookshop had helped as well, soft old thing; around midday, he’d startled to hear the gramophone playing a quiet tune in the distance. 

_ Yesterday my life was in ruin _

_ Now today I know what I'm doing _

_ Gotta feeling I should be doing all right _

_ Doing all right _

Crowley couldn’t say he particularly liked that one. The shop was not always a soft old thing, much like her angel; it might have made him smile, before. The barbed passive aggression he could do without, circumstances considered. 

Not that she wasn’t right. Yesterday Aziraphale had been utterly alone, yesterday Crowley had decided needing space to think was more important. Now, of course, he didn’t have much else to do but think. And worry. He’d say irony was a hellish creation if any of them had the creativity to think of it. 

The books he was scouring didn’t raise his spirits any higher. He knew what this was, why it happened, what would happen if it gone on too long, but there was nothing on how to fix it. How to make the last white feathers close to Aziraphale’s shoulders stay white and fluffy, how to keep them from wilting and dropping off with the last of what made Aziraphale, Aziraphale. 

“Come on!” He’d growl at them, “you’re supposed to have all the answers, aren’t you? What’s the point of you if you can’t fix this?” He’d miracle stacks of them just to topple them all over, and then miracle them back to whatever space Aziraphale had shoved them in, prim and proper as the angel liked. 

“Why don’t you know why this is happening?” He demanded at one particularly thick text on Angel theories; it had brushed on the topic of hope and prayer and an angels ‘life force’ being reliant on their feathers, but that was it. No guide on how to reattach any missing feathers, nothing on pale, greying away best friends in catatonic states. “It’s not supposed to happen to him of all people!” 

The problem, of course, with books was that they didn’t fear properly. They couldn’t grow better answers for him with a few good (but empty) threats. They couldn’t conjure up knowledge on something lost to the ages anymore than they could decide to become a tree. But the parts of them that did remember being trees tried, anyways. 

Hopelessness, it underlined at him. 

“I know! But he’s Aziraphale, he doesn’t  _ get _ hopeless! He’s the most stubbornly optimistic bastard I’ve ever met!” 

_ Faith and forgiveness, _ it italicized. 

“He can’t bloody well forgive me when he’s not even conscious, can he?” 

The books couldn’t find an answer for him with that, apparently. 

  
  


By week two, Aziraphale seemed no better, but he sighed in his sleep more frequently, less weakly. Perhaps his over eager imagining, but enough that Crowley didn’t have to beat back the fluttering jolt of panic in his chest constantly. Enough that he could sneak out for an hour or two, following up on any of the faintest leads he could imagine. 

Crowley, had he not won several commendations for generally demonic things over the years that were factually entirely made up by humans (not that management needed to know), would have likely been a top candidate for a few particular indulgences in sinful actions awards. Namely, stubbornness. Namely, his complete and utter inability to avoid taking the most possible contrarian option available. 

Namely, his bullheaded focus on keeping things exactly the same. Something he and Aziraphale had bonded over, initially. Comfort in knowing how the day would pan out for the most part, getting to curl up with a favorite book, or stare in volumes far too loudly and radiate longing across a table at a restaurant with a favorite angel, little of column A little of column B. The same. 

As it stood, his ‘the same’ involved said favorite angel quite explicitly. Thereby indicating that Crowley was prepared and willing to dive headfirst into the most steaming most sulphur laden centers of Hell and face down all of Gabriel’s snide remarks ten thousand years over if that was what it took. Meaning, Crowley was completely disregarding anything Aziraphale said on the topic involving accepting fate or some such bullshit. 

He’d never believed in a malicious God; cold and calculating angels, definitely. If not for Aziraphale and a few other stragglers, he might think unfeeling was practically a requirement for the job. God, however, had thought to bless these messy little humans with creativity in the first place. Whether they’d determined free will from there on without her influence was a bit more grey area ish, Crowley could bend either way depending on the day. 

She wouldn’t have made the apocalypse avertable, made their impossibilities possible (even if said possibility was also a bit unclear to Crowley) just to steal Aziraphale away right in front of him. There was a loophole. There was a solution. 

Crowley just had to be clever enough to find it. 

  
  
  


The church books he’d snuck in to read (his feet would be sore for another hundred years, but it was equally as worth it as the last time so he would manage. Besides, humans had come up with all sorts of lovely burn creams since the 1940’s), were frustratingly blank. The parts that did talk about angels went on and on about righteousness and being directly linked to God’s light. Nothing at all seemed to be dedicated to the angels who weren’t fluffy and harpy beyond a few threatening lines about satan. He’d read Inferno when it had come out years ago, and always thought the Dante fellow to be a bit more creative in the threatening messages department. 

None of the human works seemed to much care for or acknowledge angels who weren’t in the Big Arch category anyways. Nothing on losing faith beyond firey brimstone-y gloomy doomy. Nothing on hopelessness. Frustratingly, rage inducingly, nothing. 

Human understanding of the whole thing seemed to be limited to ‘Gods light casting forgiveness or damnation, depending on the weather’ which was a bit more fickle than he would have expected from the lot of them. 

Satanic books didn’t appear to have anything more related. He’d been half expecting to find some sort of curse to steal the strength from an angel, something about hexing or cursing or anything generally foul intentioned. For the most part it seemed like they just wanted to be left to their own devices as well. Funny thing, humans. 

He’d gotten a bit desperate afterwards, gone digging through human archives all the way back to the Jesus era. That had been a lovely bloke, he’d probably have helped if he were around. Aziraphale and him had been friends for a bit, he’d heard. 

He took to talking to Aziraphale constantly whenever he was back, just quiet words he hoped would draw him back from wherever he’d gone. A light on for the way home. Part of him worried the angel was lost somewhere in the dim grey, that he’d been swallowed up in the fog but desperately wanted to return. A larger part of him was terrified Aziraphale had walked off into himself on purpose. 

“The shop misses you, you know,” he muttered, passing his fingers through Aziraphale’s curls. “Never heard so many sad Queen songs. Think she’s lonely without all your nonsense and stacks of books everywhere.” He sighed, bone wearily. “Why’d you go and shove all your books away, hm? You love those old things. Depressing in here without them, you know.”

He moved his hand downwards, playing with Aziraphale’s limp fingers absently. “I need you to wake up, you know. Can’t do this without you. Don’t want to, really. I just needed…. Time. To get used to things, angel. Not quite sure you know what it does to me when you hold my hand. Not sure I could handle it, if you did.” 

_ In my tangled state of mind _

_ I've been looking back to find _

_ Where I went wrong _

_ Too much love will kill you _

_ If you can't make up your mind _

Crowley let out a long, slow breath. 

“I’ll tell you what, angel. If you wake up, I’ll try, alright? I’ll…. Try to believe you mean it. Just as long as you keep trying to show me.” 

  
  


Week three and four, there was a change. A slow, horrible, awful change. Aziraphale’s breathing kept on as steady as it had been, but when Crowley flickered his gaze to his wings, he could have burned himself up in frustration and despair. 

The wings near his shoulders, the very last little fluffy bits, had grey shafts. They’d gone all stiff and crisp to the touch. 

Aziraphale didn’t have much time left. 

“Crawly, it’s been a millennium,” Farfarello sneered. “Didn’t much think you were about contacting old friends these days.” 

Crowley waved a hand dismissively and sniffed. “Friends don’t try to discorporate other friends just for kicks, Far.” 

The demon smiled, a slow creeping thing. “You know us demons, not much for friends. I suppose from what I’ve been hearing, you’ve not been much of a demon, have you?” 

Crowley frowned. “If you’ve been hearing those sorts of rumors, you’ve also been hearing the ones about how Beelzebub has directly decreed that I should be left alone, hm? Takes an awful lot to get the Prince of Hell to pass down a cease and desist order, don’t it?” 

Farfarello flinched slightly, eyes widening. The shorter demon suddenly appeared far less confident, the greasy moustache around his lips twitched. “Why have you summoned me, Crawly?” 

“Got a business deal for you. Need intel, ASAP.” 

Farfarello tilted his head. “ASAP?” 

Crowley sighed. “Means you better get on it or there’ll be a whole lot more smiting," He forced a smile, sharp and empty as always. "Need I remind you that I have an angel in my corner?” 

Farfarello gulped. Evidently not, then. “What sort of intel?” 

Crowley pulled down his glasses and glanced around, making sure all ears were turned away. “Hope. I need to know how to make a demon hope.” 

  
  


The sort of soppy sad center of it all was that Crowley wasn’t even entirely sure what he’d done wrong. There had been many occasions where Aziraphale and Crowley had gone years upon decades without running into each other prior. In fact, it was only the whole ‘raising Warlock’ business that had them falling into almost proprietary habit with bumping elbows and practicing subtle winks here and there as a code for ‘lets do dinner tonight, hm?’

He’d never even been particularly convinced Aziraphale needed him to the same unflattering and heart blasting levels that he seemed to need the angel. Aziraphale, for all his social awkwardness and aloof uncomfortable smiles, actually cared to keep human company now and again. Had regular not-customers in fact. He had hobbies and a ‘job’ and things to keep himself busy beyond staring for increasingly pathetic long hours waiting for a particular number to show up on his phone with only two programmed numbers. 

After the apocalypse, after Crowley had tried to accept that however irrevocably things had changed for him, Aziraphale would never be content with anything that abrupt or out of his control, and settle for the same old not-normal, he’d been rather lost by all of their culminating events. Lost in the increased megawatts of his angels smile, lost by the pink hue to his lips and that strange secret crinkle of his nose. Lost by the touching, by the sweet words and the utter earnestness of everything. 

He didn’t know what it  _ meant _ . Why Aziraphale would find Crowley the butt of the universes’ longest joke hilarious so suddenly, and when he’d decided poking at sore wounds to be his particular brand of sympathy. Aziraphale had made it painstakingly clear that Crowley would never be where he chose to land, that he cared too much to fall in the first place, and Crowley had maybe needed to yank his heart out by the strings to meet him there, but he’d gone and done it. Just like Aziraphale needed, because what else was he even for these days? 

He didn’t think it was too much on his part to need some down time to lick his wounds after he’d been yo-yo’d back into cheek kisses and hand holding soon after. 

Crowley just wanted to  _ want _ in peace, like the sad assortment of limbs he was, without Aziraphale going around thinking he was obliged to pretend. That the bits and pieces of shredded pity were a kindness and not a constant salting to his self destructing self worth. As if Aziraphale would ever look at him, all awkward yearning angles and desperation and nothing in the center, and suddenly see something he never had before. 

Truly, Aziraphale was the sweetest creature ever to grace the universe for trying, though. Wasn’t his fault Crowley went and soured everything with his wanting. 

But Crowley had mucked that up too, it seemed. Couldn’t even be grateful for the tiny half steps, could he? Had to make a thing of it and run off. Had to go and make Aziraphale feel guilty for his awful broken feelings, to make his angel feel responsible for not loving him in all the ways Crowley desperately craved so much. Had to make Aziraphale feel like the way he was able to love was bad, somehow, right after he’d been told as much by the rest of his ‘family’. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid, selfish Crowley. 

Wasn’t rightly fair Aziraphale was paying for his problems, though. Didn’t know how it had translated into all of this, the feathers lining the walls and the shelves and the greying shriveling portions. 

_ Maybe it wasn’t pity, _ some part of his brain thought with far too much enthusiasm.  _ Maybe he cared and he cared and he cared so much its eating him up.  _

The thought only made him panic worse, though. Thinking that Aziraphale had flipped the script somewhere and Crowley hadn’t noticed. That it was all real and Crowley had ran away anyways. 

“Don’t you go feeling bad about me,” Crowley told him warningly. “You would though, wouldn’t you? Mess up your human empathy meter on something like me? You would but you shouldn’t. Can’t, in fact. Vetoed. Better get on feeling better right away.”

He leaned forward, pulling his sunglasses from his weary cheeks. It had been somewhere on the scale of two months now, with nothing from the angel. Book leads were running low. Farfarello wouldn’t report back for a few weeks at the earliest. 

Yesterday he’d gotten angry. 

He’d contacted an angel, through a series of back water channels and sketchy ties that didn’t exist strictly speaking, he’d managed to find an angel who was willing to speak with him. Mainly for the wide eyed stare of encountering a minor celebrity slash infamous demon who annoyingly would not die, and also for the price of allowing them to tell their angel friends they’d fought That Crowley and Lived. Funny, how pride seemed to work within the upper circles. They’d have called that a lie back in his day. 

The angel was inexperienced with earthly things, but deep within the record keeping track upstairs and perhaps a little too willing to find information relating to the greying wings of yester-year. Crowley was glad they’d likely been on shelving duty back in Eden, or they’d have been toeing dangerously on the Fallen crowd. Lucky for them now, Aziraphale had kind of cornered the market in ‘how much you could get away with and Still Be Fine in God’s eyes’, supposedly. 

It wasn’t the meeting with the angel themselves that had tickled the fury receptors in Crowley’s brain, though. Their closing words of Gabriel burning up Aziraphale’s file and banning his name around the water cooler was twitch inducing, sure, but he had Bigger Concerns at the moment. It was what they’d said as they were leaving, in part. 

“I’ll report back after the soiree today, should be good files lying around while everyone’s busy.” 

“Busy?” He quirked an unaffected eyebrow. 

The angel nodded aggressively. “Oh, yes. Micheal’s trying to, er, ‘boost team spirit’ after the whole not war-ing situation. Says we’re to engage in ‘team building’.”

Crowley snorted. “Cute.”

The angel smiled awkwardly. “Erm. Yes. Well, I’m just happy to see they’re all in a better mood. Wanted to reign brimstone in the office if you know what I mean.”

He’d frowned then, “What changed their minds?” 

The angel had looked at him like they’d just realized they’d walked into a lions den. “O-oh. You know. News travels quite quickly, or. R-rumors, I mean.”

Crowley’s frown darkened. “Rumors of…?”

The angel gulped and took a hesitant step backwards. “O-of… Aziraphale, c-course. They, uh, they say that God won’t make him Fall because that would be um. Giving him what he wants? Rumor is that there’s something worse, that he’ll. Well, be made an example another way. That Gabriel found the way to bring down an angel without hell fire. So, the bosses are happy.”

“Are they now.” Crowley hissed. “Well, jussst ssssso we’re clear. Azsssiraphale issss doing just fine. Perfectly fluffy and bright and all thingssss perfectly in God’ssss gracessss. No punishment at all, in fact.”

The angel blinked wide eyes at him. 

“Rumors are funny things,” Crowley prompted. 

“Right, course. Shouldn’t listen to them.”

Crowley nodded. “Made up of nothing at all, mostly. Would be bessst to cancel this one out, I would think. Wouldn’t want to make him come and prove to you all exactly what righteous angelic fury still looks like when it can breathe hellfire, right?” 

They shook their head frantically. 

“Great,” Crowley added. 

The second the angel had jumped off into the sunlight, Crowley had hightailed it to the nearest bar and promptly drank the place dry. Then, in his infinite rage and wisdom about the whole entirety of either respective prior bosess, stumbled towards the nearest Church. 

“You never deserved him,” He told the statue at the front altar, and the two other dizzier copies swaying in and out. “He only wanted to help, the whole time. Help the humans you made, like. Like angels are s’pposed to, and he was the best at it. Real loveable, he is. No one else like him.” 

He took another swig, and fell onto a pew. “You made him like this, didn’t you? Warm and, and maybe too into collecting things and reading. Made him want to try human things. Made him stuck here with me, and for what? So I could…. Could be the only one appreciating him? Cause I do. I’d do it even better, if he wanted. I’d try any way. But, you must not love him the right way anyways, or you wouldn’t have him so lonely. Wouldn’t have,” he drank a swig again. “Wouldn’t have made me the only one who wants him, cause everyone else is too stupid to notice how good he is. A demon. And I can’t even love him the right way.” He laughed, and swung his legs down. 

“Is this a punishment, the whole demon loving an angel bit? For me or him? Cause it’s shit.” 

He thought of Aziraphale, sitting up in the white nothing that made up upstairs alone, of Gabriel’s sneers and the other’s indifference. About how hard Aziraphale had believed in all of them. 

“And for what? He trusted you, and whoop-dee-doo the world didn’t explode. The sush-sushi shops are still standing, and the gravlax and dill sauce, but the old book shops still leaving isn’t it? But there’s no more Aziraphale  _ so what was the point? _ He gave you everything, lost everything, and you’re taking more?”

He went for another swig and was met with only empty air. He growled and vanished the thing, stomping towards the altar. He pointed at the statue accusingly. 

“You’re still taking more from him. Greedy things. Can’t even love him like you’re supposed to. You and I aren’t so different after all, are we?”

Funny how alcohol seemed to dull the burning against his feet and the potential for eminent smiting. Didn’t do a lick of good for stopping how the impassive archways and blank statue eyes rattled around in his heart though. Not the way those greyed over eyes reminded him far too much of home right now. 

“Why don’t you care?” He said, finally to the quiet, and was annoyed with the way it slipped out all brittle and pleading. “You’re supposed to care, aren’t you?” 

He pretended viscerally that he wasn’t waiting for an answer, that some part of him refused to let that particular thread go. He couldn’t quite convince himself nobody had been listening, but it wouldn’t have been a cold shoulder if She’d never heard it to begin with. 

  
  
  
  


Aziraphale seemed paler, today. 

“Was it real, angel? It can’t have been. Me going off on tangents, pushing your limits again, hm? Waking up would set me right, you know." He choked on a laugh that hit somewhere high in his throat. Some sullied sorry part of him he hadn't managed to quiet even after all these years, ached at the idea. That Aziraphale had thought it rude after all their saving the world, that he thought Crowley had been owed the touches and the gentle kisses. That he'd been wincing internally all along, but soldiering through because he couldn't care the greedy way Crowley wanted him too. 

He sniffed, rubbing a hand through his messy bangs. "Sit right up and I’ll know, ‘cause I’m here telling you I don’t need pity or-or any of that empathy you’ve been storing up for a rainy day. We’re good, great even. Happy to be here, is all.” Aziraphale's vacant gaze was unmoved, somber and still as ever. Crowley rubbed the bridge of his nose.

_Oh, I used to be your baby_

  
_Used to be your pride and joy, hmm_

  
_You used to take me dancing_

  
_Just like any other boy_

The gramophone seemed to slow the song down even farther, playing it out on a strange note like it meant to harmonize with Crowley's hunched shoulders and lilting heart. Humming on in dragging pieces and portions like it meant to lock them up in Crowley's chest for him to keep. Crowley glanced up at the long dark shelves and dim orange light of the shop around them, holding them in this once place of warmth, impossibly kept bundled around their angel even in so much emptiness. He sighed. 

“I would’ve learned to be grateful, you know. Just. I just needed some time. Get my head on, sort my priorities.” 

Aziraphale sighed, thready and vacant. Crowley wanted to twist himself up, chuck his heart into the ocean, trade it in for something that worked right. Something that would make Aziraphale happy. 

“You’re always my priority, Aziraphale. I was coming back to you.”

He reached out, and linked their fingers together, slowly. Cautiously. 

_ Honey, though I'm aching _

_  
Know just what I have to do _

“I know I’m always asking you for things. Keep asking for your time, for the Arrangement, for you to trust me over everyone you’ve ever known. If I…. If I can ask only one more thing? Never ask anything again after, swear it. And you know I’ve never lied to you. Come back to me this time, angel. Come home.” 

Aziraphale’s half closed eyes seemed to catch him directly in the center with their absolute non-cognizance. Crowley tightened his fingers and hung his head. "I'm sorry, Aziraphale. Angel, I-I'm sorry. Can't even hope right. Not enough for the both of us, can I?" 

A sighing breath, quiet and soul shattering as always. Wind whistling through an empty tower, an echo caught in a valley. _Too late, Crowley, can't fix what you've broken, Crowley._

_If I can't have you when I'm waking_

  
_I'll go to sleep and dream I'm with you_

The whistle cut off mid haunt, like north winds turning on a dime. 

“Crowl’y….” 

Crowley shot to attention as though he’d been electrified, eyes flicking towards Aziraphale’s face in time to catch as Aziraphale’s lips flickered upwards, a facsimile of the perfect shy smile he usually adopted when they were alone. 

“Crowley,” he breathed again. “You came.” 

Crowley was utterly helpless, then, to do anything other than reach for his angel, to place a palm against his clammy and too warm cheek, gently and carefully and frustratingly shaky. 

“Course I did, angel. Shouldn’t have left in the first place, but you had to have known I wouldn’t-- Aziraphale, I always come back, don’t I?” 

Aziraphale wheezed a funny little choking laugh, with his eyes sliding back somewhere farther and colder, and to Crowley’s horror, his lips trembled. 

“No no, shh, angel,  _ please  _ don’t cry. Listen, we’re going to get you right as rain and-and I won’t leave you, so none of that, mm?” He pressed his hand unthinkingly to Aziraphale’s cheek, wiping tears away before they could even form, and nearly cracked in two at the way Aziraphale leaned into the touch like it was sunlight. 

“Oh, oh  _ sweetheart _ …. Please.” Crowley didn’t know what he was asking for at this point, for his heart to stop trying to swallow him whole and drag him under, for Aziraphale to just heap all his hurts on Crowley’s shoulders and smile at him again, for him to  _ stop. _

_Even in a state like this and he’s still acting like-_ Crowley shook himself. There was a time for wallowing, later, after Aziraphale was back to his usual prim and proper self, hopefully with bottles of alcohol to blur the edges. 

“‘M sorry, Crowley….. So sorry.” Aziraphale’s awful distant gaze seemed to trail even farther away, but he pushed his lips against Crowley’s palm anyways. 

“Aziraphale, shh.” Crowley’s heart was going to burst straight through his chest, climb out his throat and sputter pathetically on the ground between them. He couldn’t manage this, not the grief not the words. Not the pale and distant sheen over his lively angel. Not the rattling in Aziraphale’s lungs, or the clammy and sallow feeling of his overheated skin. 

He leaned forward and pressed his lips, dry and cold, to Aziraphale’s forehead. “That’s not much like you, mm? Making my mistakes your problems, come on angel.” He smiled weakly. 

Aziraphale’s brows arched further upwards, and his eyes twinkled just on the side of too bright. He looked distraught, then, for a moment, with his gaze a thousand years locked away and his hair limp and curled against his pale skin. 

“Should have,” Aziraphale mumbled plaintively. 

Crowley patted at Aziraphale’s hair, traced his cheeks, as though he could press Aziraphale back into whole parts if his touch could only be tender enough. “No, no… shh, you did everything right, same as always, right?” 

He was going for morale boosting, because for Somebody’s sake Aziraphale needed it, frail and small as he looked, but it just seemed to make the angel shrink in smaller, make his eyes rounder and sadder. Crowley didn’t know what was  _ wrong.  _ But the angel’s strength was waning, his eyelids pulling down as his breaths faded into their usual slow sigh, and he felt for all the world like he’d missed something important. He’d burn himself up if he’d missed his last chance.

“Aziraphale, you- this… you have to fight, okay? The hopeless shit, it’s. You can’t let it win, not after everything. Not when I made it, right? I made it, I’m here, so you can be better now.” 

Aziraphale seemed to have the same thought, his hand squeezing with as much strength as he seemed to be capable of mustering. 

"Bett'r, now." He agreed, gaze not quite tracking, smile thin and wan.  Crowley dropped his head into his hands, exhaling long and slow. 

“I’ll take it,” he said, to nothing, to the only one who was ever listening, as Aziraphale trailed off into the fog once more. “I’ll take his place. I know demons can’t get this but, I’d do it. Give me this, and- and I’ll love him right this time, whatever way he wants. Please, just make him better.” 

_You're going to love me when you see me_

_I won't have to worry_

_Take me, take me_

_Promise not to wake me 'til it's morning_

_It's all been true_

The shop’s gramophone skipped off track and trailed static back towards him. Aziraphale sighed, quiet and hollow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the Queen songs in this chapter are:
> 
> Doing Alright
> 
> Too Much Love Will Kill You
> 
> Dreamer's Ball

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: Clankclunk


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